#also i prefer real world stuff rather than the made up lands. so using the real place is something i dont mind.

[ooliecat]

ohmy god what a day to step off of tumblr for a bit. i totally missed this for a while, i'm so sorry.

a mission story with these three? hearing that is enough for me. teary eyed.

this was very charming. and i love charming. maybe i’ll draw stuff out of it. maybe. thank you, parts of it were like, made for me. and it Was made for me. love it so much because of that. thank you again! happy new year!

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Psychonauts (Video Games) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Razputin “Raz” Aquato & Sasha Nein, Razputin “Raz” Aquato & Milla Vodello Characters: Razputin “Raz” Aquato, Sasha Nein, Milla Vodello, Original Characters Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Mission Fic, Thunderstorms, Islands, Infiltration, Tension, Some Humor, bit of an open ending Summary:

An unexpected storm brews. From the Pelican, across the island, and to the culprit, Raz goes with Sasha and Milla to complete what should have been an easy job.

happy wicked late holidays @ooliecat! i took on your present when your santa dropped. hope you enjoy!!

[iridescentoracle]

Hello! I am here to ask about your Dior headcanons re: the political cohesion of Doriath. 👀

Oh man, I didn't expect anyone to actually take me up on that!

(Okay so I got partway into writing this and then realized I should probably note up front that I tend to stick to the Silm (& LOTR/the Hobbit where applicable, but they... aren't, here) as the most authoritative version of canon, and I can get into why and where the nuances/exceptions are there (I do say tend to stick, it's not hard and fast!), but that's mostly a side note here: the point is simply that I don't really factor other drafts or the poetic Leithian into my take on Doriath, Thingol, Dior, etc, just what we're told in the actual Silm. I also read the Silm as an in-universe history text compiled by in-universe scholars, who, being people, are going to have their own biases and blind spots, even when they're doing their best to be accurate!)

So, this is a two-part thing: #1, there's the political cohesion of Doriath before & at the time of Thingol's death, which i talked about in the tags of the post that prompted this ask but is kind of necessary as context for the Dior part to make sense, and #2, there's the actual Dior headcanons. Both of these parts are very long because I've never really seen anyone else suggest any of this stuff and I want to explain where I'm coming from thoroughly enough that it actually makes sense to people who aren't me, but the TL;DRs:

TL;DR 1: I think Doriath was probably a hot mess politically after Thingol died, with tensions between various groups of Sindar and Laiquendi in the leadup to Thingol's death & Melian's departure, and more political tensions afterwards between those who wanted Beren & Lúthien to come be the new rulers, and those who thought they should stay gone, with someone still in Doriath taking over.

TL;DR 2: I think Dior became Eluchil, potentially at the request of some portion of the Iathrim, hoping to help prevent Doriath from devolving into civil war, and saw dealing with the Silmaril-Fëanorioni situation as a lower priority than stabilizing Doriath's internal political situation until it was too late.

1. The political cohesion (or rather, lack thereof) in Doriath prior to Thingol's death

So, okay, the thing about Doriath is that we don't actually have any real idea of like... how much the Iathrim liked being the Iathrim? We're never told about any intra-Iathrim conflict, but a) the Silm was probably compiled mostly by surviving Gondolindrim or their descendants, so they wouldn't know about anything liike that unless surviving Iathrim told them, and after the Second Kinslaying I don't imagine many Iathrim would've been eager to talk about how things had actually been tense/messy/etc when they could remember everything as having been perfect until it was ruined by the Fëanorionrim, and doubly so after the Third Kinslaying, so why would anything like that make it into the Silm?

and b) what we do know about Doriath is that it wasn't really Doriath as we know it until Morgoth came back to Middle-earth, and everything went to hell.

At the start of the first age, you suddenly get Doriath (the fenced land!) being the one protected area of a continent that used to be totally free and open. How many Sindar actually didn't particularly care for Thingol's style of leadership, or simply preferred to live nomadic lives, going basically wherever they pleased, until suddenly that wasn't safe anymore, and you were only guaranteed survival if you were close enough to Menegroth to be within the Girdle when it went up? ditto how many Laiquendi had no interest in swearing loyalty to Thingol right after their own king had just been killed, but again, made it to safety and stayed there over taking their chances on their own in the outside world? (None of this is meant as any insult to Thingol himself, by the way; he can have been a good king who did his best for his people and still rubbed some of his new subjects-by-necessity the wrong way, through no fault of his own or theirs.)

I think it's entirely possible that there were always potential political tensions under the surface in Doriath that just... never got written about, because they never boiled over into actual political conflict, and so it was never the sort of tension that had any bearing on the historical record.

Except then Beren & Lúthien happen to the world, and a few years later the Narn, and in the blink of an eye suddenly the only king Doriath has ever had is dead, and the only queen Doriath has ever had is gone and the Girdle with her—and more than that, the only rulers the Sindar had ever had for three thousand years before Doriath existed.

And where a few years earlier I think the Iathrim would probably have turned pretty universally to Lúthien, now she's abandoned them for her human husband—and while she's my favorite character in the entire legendarium hands-down and I don't blame her, I think that's another place there might have actually been some very mixed feelings among the Iathrim that nobody wanted to admit to later because how could anyone have been upset with Lúthien—and on top of her abandoning them for him, I think it's extremely probable most of Doriath did not actually get over their xenophobia about humans in general or Beren in specific when Thingol did (we know for sure at least some of Doriath didn't, cf. Saeros insulting Túrin's mother & sister to his face), but again, who's going to admit to having had a grudge against the holy couple of Middle-earth after the fact, you know?

Conversely, there could've been a sizeable faction of Sindar who had been totally loyal to Thingol until everything happened with Beren & Lúthien, but who found his actions towards them and/or Finrod to be where they drew the line, and while (unlike B&L themselves) that faction stayed in Doriath, there could've been a new, additional tension on that front.

Finally, for all we know there were multiple factions within the Laiquendi of Doriath, with political tensions stretching back to before their king died, rooted in who-even-knows!

2. Dior

All of that, of course, sets up a very, very messy political situation for Dior to walk into.

The Doriath stuff is arguably more speculation than actual headcanon, but here's where the unambiguous headcanons come in: I don't think "Dior Eluchil set himself to raise anew the glory of the kingdom of Doriath." Obviously that's how it got written down, but bluntly, I can't see Beren and Lúthien having a kid that stupid or, like, power-hungry and arrogant?

What I can see is a situation where the messenger that brought word of Thingol's death and Melian's departure asked Beren & Lúthien to come take over as the new king and queen, we promise we're not mad about you leaving and we won't be xenophobic to your husband anymore we swear it's fine now pretty please, Beren & Lúthien said no, and the messenger either asked Dior as a second choice, or said "okay fine none of that was actually true but Doriath is falling apart and we need a leader ASAP and there's about eight different contenders* (mostly kinsmen of Thingol or Laiquendi) being backed by various factions and it's going to devolve into civil war any minute so if you care at all—" and Dior said "would I do?"

(* Ask me about my Galadriel headcanon)

I don't think Dior necessarily wanted to be king of Doriath, and I don't think he saw the throne as his birthright or anything like that; I don't think anyone involved, from Thingol to Lúthien to Dior himself, ever considered the possibility of Thingol dying and needing an heir! I think it's possible he was asked, or at most that he offered, and either way, I think he saw becoming king as taking on a responsibility for the sake of others.

(Which, like, "well here's a potentially impossible task that I'm going to take up even though probably no one thinks I'm actually capable of it, but it's my duty to help others as best I can" sure does sound to me like an attitude one might develop when raised by Lúthien "I kicked Sauron's ass cast a sleep spell on Morgoth and persuaded the Valar to find a loophole in the fabric of reality" Tinuviel and Beren "I stayed by my father's side as an outlaw to give my mother time to lead the rest of our people away hopefully to safety knowing I would never see her or any of them again (and then spent several years being a giant thorn in Morgoth's side for good measure)" Barahirion, where "apparently my grandpa I may or may not have ever met died, guess that makes me the king of a place i may or may not have ever been" does... not.)

I also think he either took on the epithet Eluchil, or was given it by whichever factions of the Iathrim accepted him as king, when he actually became king. Obviously he's going to be referred to as Dior Eluchil even before that in retrospect because that's how he's thought of later, but that doesn't mean it was actually a name he always had, you know?

The final thing is, I think if Dior essentially walked into a political situation five seconds from devolving into civil war, it makes his inaction regarding the Silmaril prior to the Second Kinslaying make more sense: the Fëanorioni have been sitting around doing nothing about the Silmaril in Doriath / with Beren & Lúthien this whole time, the letter saying "hey that's our Silmaril give it back now" is probably just a formality, and Dior's only been ruling for a couple years, there's still plenty of people dubious about whether he should be king at all, he might well be subject to at least some of whatever xenophobia remains about humans in Doriath, and in general all the work he's done on stabilizing the kingdom will absolutely come undone again if he screws up; he's trying to keep a kingdom from falling apart, the Silmaril thing can wait.

Of course, it wasn't a formality, and it couldn't wait, but why would Dior have known that?

[anneapocalypse]

It's really fascinating, looking back at my first impressions of Inquisition.

(Long rambling reflections follow!)

For one thing I had forgotten just how much trouble I had initially with the combat mechanics, with how different they were from the first two games. I was really struggling, and I think that had to have affected how the early game hit for me--it's difficult to take in a lot of the details when you're just trying to get a handle on the controls. It's always a challenge for me re-training my brain and muscle memory for a new game, but I think I'm much better at it now--these days I'm pretty frequently hopping back and forth between Dragon Age and FFXIV, very different games, without more than some hiccups.

I was playing exclusively on console at the time, and despite Inquisition's control scheme skewing heavily toward console, I much prefer it on PC. But I prefer basically everything on PC these days if I can get it. And still, the first time I played Inquisition on PC, I had to plug in a controller. Now I'm quite comfortable keyboard-and-mousing it, but it was a more difficult adjustment for DAI than for the previous two games, which I picked up pretty quickly.

It's genuinely funny reading my frustrated old liveblogs about TPKing in the Hinterlands, because... I've just reached that area in my replay, I'm playing the same character at the same difficulty level, I haven't even touched the companions' tactics yet, and I'm having no trouble taking down enemies. Even back then, I was like "This is just me being Bad at Games," and well, it was. :P I kinda have to conclude that I'm just plain Better at Games now! (The fact that on this playthrough I immediately crafted my own armor and weapons, which even with the most basic of materials still well outstrip the default kit, might also have something to do with it.)

One thing that has not changed: I hated the tac cam then and I hate it now. :P I still basically never use it in Inquisition.

Another thing that was clearly a big adjustment for me was just... this updated, higher-res vision of the world. In one of my early liveblogs I described it as feeling like "a weird fever dream about Thedas" rather than Thedas. Eight years and five playthroughs later, Inquisition is now fully integrated into my mental landscape of Thedas and I don't feel that way at all. Inquisition added a lot of new stuff, and it certainly recontextualized a lot of things we knew about the universe, but it doesn't on the whole feel like a departure from some pure vision to me; it's just a part of it.

I see a lot of criticisms and complaints in my early liveblogs. There are some that I still agree with. There are a lot of things that would be addressed, explained, or otherwise resolved later in the game. Like early on I talked about not being a big fan of "Chosen One" narratives, and in fact it turns out that the Inquisitor isn't a Chosen One at all, or at least it feels to me very intentionally written so that you can reject that reading, and the whole concept of Chosenness gets pretty thoroughly deconstructed later on. I made a crack about Haven having all these rough-hewn single-room cottages with fancy gilt-framed portraits on the wall--but even that starts to make more sense when I am reminded that Haven has been under the control of an Orlesian nobleman who married the Fereldan lady who owned the land, and in the intervening ten years it has become a pilgrimage destination for Andrastians with the means to make the trip--many of them likely Orlesian. That just wasn't something I was going to put together on my first clumsy playthrough, but now I see it. I do still have some lingering dislike for the word "Inquisition" being used for this organization and the whole game--I still kinda think it has a bit too much real-world baggage attached to it--but I've softened a little on that since playing Trespasser because I do think the game itself is meant to be subtly critical of the Inquisition as an institution. I was put off by how Leliana had grown away from her Origins self, but I've really completely come around on that since coming to better understand the things she's experienced in the intervening years. I read certain things as narrative framing the audience was meant to agree with which I now read as simply subjective in-character opinions (and which sometimes even have pushback from other characters.) I was really harsh on "The Dawn Will Come," which I read a lot differently now than I did then. I even unthinkingly repeated that now-extremely-tired joke about how there are barely any dragons in Dragon Age, which, embarrassing. :P (To be fair I didn't know about all the high dragons yet, but uh, still.)

I can confidently say today that the hair options are indeed bad--but also that they looked way worse on console. I stand behind wishing female dwarves were a bit broader and stockier, and I know I'm not alone in that. I was also mad about the continuing lack of dwarf romances, on which point I do have to concede that 2014!Anne was extremely valid. (I hadn't yet discovered the Harding mini-mance at the time, but that's still not a full romance).

I also said this:

For real though unless Skyhold has been protected by some kind of ancient elven magic, I can’t believe this game seriously expects me to believe this enormous and highly defensible fortress that is  strategically placed near the Orlesian border has just lain empty for decades--

lol.

Going in, I see that I had pretty low expectations for the story but was really excited about the characters. Which isn't a bad approach to take necessarily (the characters are indeed great) but I also think I let a lot of the fandom climate at the time really... poison the well for me. When everyone's experiencing new canon for the first time, criticisms are inevitable and normal, but they can also get amplified and then sort of codified by that amplification and consensus to the point where, when the thing is actually addressed or resolved later in the story, it has an uphill battle to shake that already-crystallized idea that Thing Bad. (And that's to say nothing of the collective effect of so many people going in already having decided before the game came out that it would be Bad.) There are Thing Bad takes about Inquisition that are still common to this day, which I would have agreed with on that first playthrough, but no longer do because I've come to read them in a different light. More than anything, I regret being swayed by all the Sera hate I saw on my dash at the time to the point that I was honestly kind of afraid to give myself a chance to like her. When I finally did give Sera a chance I fell completely in love with her and she's ended up being one of my all-time faves.

Apart from that though, I was really loving the characters. I loved Cassandra, I loved Vivienne, I was digging the Josephine romance hard (and I'm so excited to finally finish it).

I actually put out a post asking followers to tell me if it was safe to proceed to close the Breach without finishing the Hinterlands because it seemed way too early to be endgame and I didn't want to lose any quests!

I wandered away from my first playthrough (and kinda from Dragon Age overall) somewhere mid-game, after "Here Lies the Abyss" but before "Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts." Looking at my old liveblogs I see that I was really loving my character, Calla Cadash; I made a lot of enthusiastic posts about her and her romance and friendships and I was even writing a ficlet series, and yet I do think that I was struggling a bit with her motivation to be in the Inquisition. Now that I've brought her back for a do-over, I think Calla is a great character that I'm going to love playing; she just wasn't a great first character for this game. Eleanor Trevelyan was the kind of character I needed to get me through my first playthrough: faithful but baffled, terrified but compassionate, a character who meshed easily with the plot and was motivated to do all the sidequests and most importantly had nowhere else to go. She was a perfect First Character. And once I knew the game and the story, it was easy enough to make up reasons why my other Inquisitors would stick around and become invested, and I got to start exploring other perspectives--but I needed that kind of First Character to get to know the story first. (Being a multi-world-state mess does work out well for me here. 😉)

As a part of this playthrough, I recreated my very first Warden, Jolene Cousland, and replayed her on PC. She is probably one of the more boring Wardens I've created, but it was fun to revisit her all the same, and more importantly she was a perfectly good First Character to introduce me to the game and the world. She worked. I still like her. I never really had a First Hawke, exactly, since I played Default Hawke the first time (super out of character for me but a friend at the time talked me into it; "Default Male Hawke is the best Hawke" was very much a Thing at the time 🙄). So I went ahead and made myself a new Hawke, Mallory, to fit into what is now my Rogues Gallery world state, and had a blast with her. And now, I'm back to Calla to finally give her the full story she deserves.

I've read through my old Calla posts, and some thing about her are definitely going to change, because I no longer have that First Playthrough pressure to see everything sitting on me. I get to focus on building the character, and seeing new things, and having fun with her.

It's been fun, if surreal and weird in some ways, to revisit that first playthrough and what my first thoughts on the game were, and how much my view of it has changed. I will certainly have all of this in mind when Dreadwolf comes out, and I have it in my hands and am experiencing it (and probably trying to learn a new combat system) for the first time.

[rudi10001]

Rudi10001's Guide to Designing Realistic Animals

So, drawing animals can be a challenge to some especially for people who still learning how to draw them, well this guide will teach how YOU can draw realistic animals.

NEVER make the legs straight: If you make your animal's legs straight something's wrong with this creature as if it where in permanent pain and suffering because some dumb person decided to stick metal poles in it's legs, remember almost all animal legs bend so please make their legs bend they must have 2 bends at minimum

Here, are all of the different types of leg that an animal can have from left to right, first we have Plantigrade which yeah some animals do have a plantigrade mode of walking us humans are plantigrades, but plantigrady is quite rare in animals because most prefer to be quick to avoid danger, and thus leading to Digitigrades, these animals make up a majority of all land animals because of how efficient it is and these animals differ from plantigrades because they walk on their toes and not their whole foot think your pet cat or dog which are digitigrades. Last but least are Unguligrade animals, think ungulates they are an infamous example of an unguligrade they walk on the very tips of their toes unlike digitigrades and almost all members are herbivores. Though this rule does NOT apply to aquatic creatures as they have fins instead of legs.

2. DO NOT Awesomebro them: Do I need really go into this rule? Awesomebro is usually a term used by dinosaur experts to types of people/media who usually see dinosaurs, rather than normal living animals of prehistoric times, as violent bloodthirsty monsters usually to appeal towards the general audience. Though I think this term can also be used on fictitious animals as well, this usually means shrink-wrapping, the addition of spikes, and sometimes stupidly powerful stuff like stupidly powerful venom that can kill anyone with one bite. Real animals can be just as if not even cooler than these monstrous animals that have their bones exposed and have spikes and kill everything in their path because they are heartless killers, instead of doing normal animal things like sleeping, playing, doing their uh business (that means taking a crap), eating, mating. Not everything in an animal's life is all about fighting to the death there's more of mundane things like I have listed up top, as cool as it is they too are living things. Sorry about that rant that I made

3. ALWAYS make them proportionate: Please DON'T make the animal's head like many times larger than it's body, if you have trouble with a creature's proportions you can always use references, so if you're using a feline creature you can use a cat and other felids as reference when creating it, if you're using a tyrannosaur-like creature you can use real tyrannosaurs as reference. So, you can have the most accurate proportions to an animal, I mean I am BAD at drawing arthropods but I can use reference images of Arthropods to draw an anatomically accurate one.

4. NEVER leave an animal's description as blank: This would make people ask what this animal is related to and what does it eat? This is much worse if they're on a drawing with a still pose so explaining how this animal lived would your viewers context of what their world might look like and the ecosystem they live in.

5. ALWAYS make their colors believable: Animals come in a variety of colors, though all of them are believable to a certain point, so not telling a reason as for why a certain animal of yours is vibrantly colored is like saying a certain creature is classed as something and not explaining why.

Though these rules DO NOT apply to Furries, humanoid creatures, and sapient creatures, as they are more human than animal, so they'll have their own guide. Btw these are for worldbuilding and Spec Evo, so if you just design animal just because you want to you do actually have to follow these rules, but they're there if you want it.

[fortressofserenity]

Turning to substitutes part two

I said before that the Philippines is far better off allying more with China than with America, not only is it too westernised for its own good, but also because America is slipping as a superpower so we need to have something else to look up to. My personal preference is China and not Russia because I don’t want the Philippines to be westernised the third time, since being westernised twice is already an overkill. So it’s something that will happen anyways, only due to my intercessions, but also because China’s just around the corner enough for the Philippines to ally with and look up to more. It’s even more convenient this way, when you think about it. Same goes for Indonesia and Vietnam.

As for Canada, Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe, it would be Russia that they’ll be looking up to more. It’s been prophesised by somebody like Celestial that Russia will take over the western world because much of it backslides, the western world was the epicentre of Christianity but over time it’s gotten secular. It’s not even a good thing by biblical standards because we must be faithful to God, or otherwise bad things will happen. This has happened to me before, so it took something to get me back on track. The path is rocky due to my disobedience, it still is but I’m doing my best to do better. I might be lying about this, but it’s never going to be easy.

It would be no different for Europe and Canada, but with America declining as a superpower that it’s better for these two to turn to Russia more. It will be awkward, it will be hard. But without America as a superpower, it would be necessary to shift geopolitical allegiances. Just as the Philippines will turn to China out of necessity, so will Europe and Canada to Russia and Celestial said that the Soviet Union might return in some form. It wouldn’t be exactly like the original Soviet Union or even the Russian empire, rather Russia will have these countries as its protectorates with America as its colony. Kind of a horrifying irony because these two were rivals before.

It’s actually been said by others like not only Celestial, but also the Handmaid of the Most High and Dumitru Duduman that America is Mystery Babylon. Why would America be Mystery Babylon and not some other nation-state? It’s more realistic this way because there are Biblical passages mentioning a land beyond the rivers of Ethiopia (more parsimoniously, a land beyond the entirety of Africa), that land is stated to have wings and North America appears to have wings. In Revelation, Mystery Babylon is described as sitting on multiple waters and is a superpower. But with both Mexico and Canada being ruled out, we have America as our real answer.

Canada’s under British jurisdiction, Mexico’s not powerful enough. So we’re left with America since it’s the only nation-state that qualifies the role of Mystery Babylon the most, it was a hyperpower when it became the only superpower for a while. If it’s Mystery Babylon, then it only exacerbates its ability to corrupt the entire world with. It wouldn’t be any better if Russia becomes a superpower and takes over much of the western world, except that America has fallen into the states of further abomination that no sooner or later it will be sent packing. Not only will its influence be largely undone and forgotten, but that it’s going to be physiogeographically gone for good. Celestial even said that.

She said that America will be forgotten to time, made unrecognisable and stuff, which is kind of unthinkable to us. But it could also be a blessing in disguise because most of America’s influence isn’t good to begin with, whatever that’s good and edifying will remain. I even prayed for American ministries and organisations to move to Canada and Mexico for safety, which if they do then they’ll be better off for it as they’ll continue in some other form there. It wouldn’t be easy but at least they’ll still be around in those countries should America fall and disappear for good, they’d be one of the few good things America has wrought.

I even prayed for American Christians to move to Canada and Mexico for safety, should a civil war happen in America again, or for another matter Zac Hanson and his family moving to Ghana. But that’s preferable to becoming a casualty of an increasingly godless America, better to be safe and sound elsewhere however awkward the transition will be, than risk becoming a casualty of an ever-worsening America. In all honesty, I even prayed to God to have Canada, Britain and Ireland join Russia. It would be a kind of family reunion of sorts, though one born out of necessity because America will be gone and Russia is going to take over the western world.

This would have horrifying geopolitical implications because if Denmark, Finland, Russia, Norway and Sweden all join Russia, then Russia will have absolute control over the Arctic. If Britain, Ireland, France and Spain all join Russia, then Russia will have some control over the Atlantic and Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon will be trading with what are essentially Russian vassal states. The disappearance of America as a superpower would necessitate changes in geopolitical alliances, but this is under God’s will because he’s going to get rid of America for good. Celestial said that America will be removed for all its terrible transgressions, be forgotten to time and be no more.

So it’s better for any American Christian ministry and organisation to thrive elsewhere. They will leave a lasting legacy in countries other than America where they’ll thrive and continue, it wouldn’t be easy but at least it gets to survive longer elsewhere. Why did I include Canada to be part of Russia? Because I don’t want it to end up like America, so becoming a Russian protectorate would be a fate better than complete disappearance that will befall America. Even if America doesn’t completely disappear physiogeographically, it will be made highly unrecognisable and uninhabitable due to nuclear bombardment and stuff. It will also be made culturally unrecognisable when it becomes a Russian colony.

But then this would make Canada the nation most reminiscent of what America was before, future Americans will look up to it as America’s nostalgic mirror. Unfortunately many Americans will also be enslaved, be sent to work elsewhere from Russia to Britain. A family reunion happening in the most unexpected of ways. But also a terrible punishment for what America has done and ended up doing over the years.

[husbandohunter]

Stardew Impact [Stardew Valley+Genshin Impact x Reader]

Part 2/3 Zhongli, Xiao

Synopsis: “A mysterious phenomenon brought you and your s/o to an unfamiliar world: Pelican Town! Without the power of Visions, the two of you begin to learn the life of what it takes to be...a farmer?”

(DOMESTIC FARM LIFE ROUND TWO)

Genre: Fluff

Others

Diluc and Kaeya

Albedo and Childe

(A/n): This was meant to be part 3 but I couldn't wait to write xiao. Plus Ive been writing Albedo for almost the whole month already Word count_2.6k

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Xiao

• Thrown in an unfamiliar environment puts Xiao on high alert. Instincts kick in and his hand subconciously grabs for his spear. Nothing. Not even his vision activated. Xiao's gaze darts all over before landing on your figure. He sighs in relief, you're safe, that much he can decipher as of now.

• Stripped of his power, left with only claws and teeth (if must) to protect you from any dangers, he was ansty with every little thing. 

• The villagers are so nice??? For what reason must they have to act so friendly to strangers (Xiao wonders). The Mayor even granted you two a vast farmland free of charge. 

• Shortly he realized he no longer had his karmaic debt. Xiao wasn't sure how to live his life in this state. He dedicated his entire existence to years of slaughter and suffering that it became the only thing he knew. He won't admit it of course, he'll just throw in scoffs and remarks about how mundane activities are a waste of time when in reality, he just has no clue on how to handle them.

• Thats why the first day was difficult as you both try to figure out how to plant parnsips. Deciding it was better to go with an experiment, you split the share of seeds in half and used what basic knowledge you had on farming to finish the job. Xiao on the other hand tried copying what you did….though the outcome wasn't so desirable it was a mess. (His trained hands have taught him to be on the rough side).

• He doesn't bother socializing with the townspeople even though he has no karmaic debt to worry about. Xiao thinks you're more than enough anyways so what's the point? 

• Robin is the only person who can tolerate him for obvious reasons (cough Sebastian cough) she knows exactly how to deal with his personality type. His glares don't faze her, she simply thinks its just a teenage phase of some sort. 

• Eventually they become mutuals, Xiao thinks Robin is similar to Verr Goldet in a way. Since he's the one who does the heavy labour of chopping down trees and mining stones for building upgrades, he gets a chance to visit her house quite often. He comes back with lots of recipes too.

• You find out that his adepti blood never left him. Xiao doesn't need sleep so you better believe it when he tells you the next morning that he spent the whole night watering all 300 of your crops (watering is the only process he's good at for farming). 

• Sometimes you catch him staring out of the window, wondering what he may be thinking. Life was so much more different, almost hard to recognize. Was this real? Is it okay for it to be real, just this once? Ever since he committed his duty to Morax, Xiao didn't dream of a time when everything would be peaceful. Yet here he is, no longer a weapon but on a journey to find out what it's like to live as a normal person. 

• Spring: Every morning you find him kneeling behind the cabin with the pet cat (yes, cats seem to suit Xiao very much). He just stares at them, hesitant if he wanted to pet their fur or rub their chin. So he continues to glare intensely, scaring your cat away :(

• Whenever you wanted to attend any of the town's festivities, Xiao wouldn't even hide his distastefulness but goes with you regardless. Why do mortals consider hiding eggs and finding them a fun activity? And what kind of a name is Flower Dance? Can't they just call it a dance?

• Though…he does like the sight of you wearing a flower crown. Xiao likes putting stuff in your hair.

Since setting foot upon this new world, time seemed to have slowed down to the point that almost everything felt like an eternity. And you didn't mind, with him by your side, you wouldn't mind if it did last forever.

The lull of the grass was the only sound Xiao could hear as he closed his eyes and rested his head on your lap. You maneuvered across his scalp in small, subtle motions, surprised with how warm he felt against the heat your palm. He stirs a little and lets out a soft breath before turning his face to lay on the side.

You were slightly intrigued by the yaksha's new demeanor. From far away, Xiao was an intimidating man, even during the first time you laid eyes him, his presence felt similar to a knife pointing at anyone who dares to come too close. But now, the face that usually held his signature annoyance melted into something you never thought you'd see as the sun rays brushed against the surface of his fair skin. You observed the way his dark eyebrows stayed in a relaxed arch. The red crescents lining right above his beautiful long lashes and the sound of soft snores through parted lips. It was hard to believe that this man was the same person who claimed to have ended a thousand lives through thousands of years.

Did he fall asleep already?

Gently moving away the strands away from his cheekbone, hovered your gaze above him and whispered, "I thought adepti don't need rest."

"Hmph," Xiao responds, though there was no harshness in his tone, "Quit trying to be difficult, I didn't tell you to stop."

The smug grin on your face only widens. You lean downward and said to his ear, "And what's the magic word~?"

Xiao sighs at your antics. You were truly pushing your luck today and he simply didn't have the patience to entertain you. Without a warning, he grabs your wrist and pulls you down, foreheads pressing until you were but a breath away. The adepti conquers, he does not plead.

• Summer: As expected, your parnsnips weren't able to grow as much. Thus, this season was going to be the one to make up for the lost profit. Xiao is very good at hunting, perhaps the best in the entire town. Though the way he catches fish is rather peculiar, said by the folks. He prefers to carve a spear made of wood and repeatedly stabs the lake until results show. Xiao dislikes the old fashioned way, he says its unproductive and it unecissarily takes too much time. 

• But as much as he scared the whole town, they were extremely grateful when he cleaned up the slime issues happening in the mines. You could say that he grew very popular since then and eventually mustered up the courage to greet him a hello whenever he passes by. 

• You nudge him to reply back. Xiao usually shoots you a glare but slowly, he learns the courtesy of acknowledging someone's prescence.

• Fall: You woke up to a burnt smell coming from the kitchen. Xiao just thought he would return the favour since you always worked so hard. (He was actually trying to figure out what a 'whisk' was. It was no wonder why there were eggshells in the dish!)

• You realized that Xiao was taking more initation compared to before. At night, when you thought the animals were actively jumping in the barns, the noise was actually from Xiao trying to adjust himself to the ways of tending the field. After learning what TV was, he would always switch to the channel "Livin off the land" to gain some insight. Truly, Xiao was greatful even though he knew he eventually had to return to his duties, he wanted to utilize the current days the best way he could. And what better way was it to just make you happy in return?

• Winter: This was the season to test the accumulation of Xiao's abilities: you caught a cold and he had to manage everything in his own. Xiao scolded you for not wearing enough and being too careless but at the same he considered that you must've been working too hard.

• Goes to Robin for help. She basically became his mom now. Prepares the food and leaves them in the fridge, she teaches Xiao how to use the phone in case he needed any help and also lets him know where all the essentials are. 

• Xiao stayed by your side the whole time even though you told him you'd be fine. But he refuses, he may no longer be a gaurdian but he was your gaurdian. That role never changed.

~~x~~

Zhongli

• You wake up on a soft bed with Zhongli sitting at a chair nearby. He hands you a cup of brewed water but you're still blatlantly confused. Seems like everything was taken care of by Zhongli, it ends up with him explaining everything to you. 

• The folks instantly assumes you both as a married couple. Who could blame them? He did carry your unconcious body all the way to town while asking for a local doctor. You can bet that the ladies wish they were you at that moment. Zhongli took care of everything, including with the contract with the new farm.

• It didn't take long for you both to adjust to the new lifestyle. Zhongli's accumulated knowledge was enough to last all four seasons. Days past by peacefully as you shared the tasks. He'd place down the stone paths towards the gate and you busied yourself with decorating the house. After that was done, Zhongli would rest upon the rocking chair outside your door (like the grandpa he is) and sometimes you'd join him in one reading session. His voice was soothing, you eventually dipped into a slumber as the evening grew colder. Just like always, your beloved brings his arm to encapsulate you from the wind, brushing his thumb against your skin subconciously while you snore softly into his shoulder.

• In a way, the townsfolk were right. You both do act like a married couple. It's basically domestic life with Zhongli in a nutshell.

• He gets connected with Gunther and lands a role in the Museum. Since he's there so often, Zhongli also manages to be acquainted with Elliot as well. Two men who have a common interest with books while speaking in poetic prose. Their conversation would last for hours to the point Gunther had to kick them out of the library!

• Veeeery good with the children, not in an entertaining way but its just the aura he reeks. Penny usually had trouble dealing with Vincent since he never seems to be able to focus but the minute Zhongli speaks, he's all ears. Not only that he was also very good with the elderly. He even recommended some herbs George could take to soothe his back issues.

• Problem is that he still forgets to bring his wallet and Childe isn't here to save him. So once you stepped foot into the Stardrop Saloon and Gus calls you over, he tells you about the cost he owed to his tab….

• But this tranquil life full of genuinity and deprived of sovereignty, he was overjoyed to be able to spend it with you. Because he knew you were unlike him, that all humans were born with an expiry date. He knew so well that after every new greeting, he would have to face the goodbyes over and over until the world eventually came to an end. He knew you were also going to be part of those many goodbyes while he would still be here.

• But as Zhongli walks amongst the fallen leaves, he remembered the beauty that carries within every new beginning. They brought him to you and he would never hesitate to trade his gnosis for it.

Spring: You shot up your bed when Zhongli blast the TV at full volume. He apologizes, saying that he was simply trying to change the channel. You figured it was best for him to go outside before he somehow glitches the screen until it couldn't repair itself (Robin charges for repairs).

• Every thursday you both go to Pierre's store to complete your grocery shopping. He offers to push the cart as you fill the basket with all the necessities (plus it saves you the trouble of having him tossing whatever he sees without looking at the price tag).

• Every afternoon you order a take out from the Saloon, sharing the meal while sitting at the fountain's edge near the community center. Every evening Zhongli would take you to explore the rest of the vast farmland, discovering places you weren't even aware of. It was no wonder why everyone thought you were a married couple. 

• Summer: Since the cabin was too small for a bathroom, you guys would have to travel up the mountains in order to get to the Spa house (cue sweatiness x10). 

• The concept of hotsprings was derived from Inazuma so it was no surprise that Liyue eventually took it after him. Zhongli had collected some incense from foraging items over the past few months, he knows whats up. But overall he gives the best bath sessions (hands down) and you were the one who insisted in joining him.  He was a gentle and sweet lover, always putting your needs before his. Ancient artifacts and old history books have always been precious to him, he treated you no differently.

The heartbeat of the oceans continues to rock back and forth until they brush up on the sandy shore, washing away the two pairs of footprints left behind by a man and a woman.

Gold against gold, his amber eyes reflected against the scenery. Millions of lights flashed among the sea when the sun began to climb down from the sky, it's rays hugged across the valley like an ethereal glow bestowed by the heavens as summer's wind brought even more warmth than what he had currently felt. You trance ahead of with the same light shaping around your form. 

"Oh hey there's another rainbow shell," you waved at him before running off, "I'll be back!"

How is it that you still continue to shine like gold in his memories?

Zhongli suddenly ponders at the chapters laying ahead of him. He spent so many years turning each page without ever reaching a conclusion, forever searching the fabled happy endings written in fairytale books, but he knew his immortality wouldn't grant him that wish.

Thus, the formal archon raised his pen and reweaves his own story. He envisions his future with you by his side, engraving every detail until it was immortalized in his memories.

Perhaps I shouldn't keep her waiting.

With a renewed resolve, Zhongli clutches the gemstone tightly in his palm, he seals the page with the final contract between your future and his.

• Fall: After getting your first house upgrade, it was time for the next event: the ceremony. Yes, Zhongli would only have a wedding if Liyue traditions were involved. Everyone was invited of course, they were quite intrigued with the flashy setup such as lanterns and fireworks (you were a little worried with where he got the budget for such items) and Zhongli even educated Gus about some recipes he can use for the Saloon.

• You found out that Zhongli was saving all his money for this day (it was no wonder that he couldn't pay for his tab!). Old habits die hard, it was a shame that he didn't have his powers to craft the right items, but at least he got to sea you in a traditional eastern dress (it's the part he was looming forward to the most).

• Fall is the best season. One you wouldn't forget.

• Winter: Ah he finally learns how to use  technology after three seasons. He only knows two channels from the TV which was 'Livin off the Land' and the weather channel. Zhongli oftens talks to himself as he tries to figure out more mechanics, he seems to be extremely absorbed in the most basic things.

• The miner of the house. But instead of using them to upgrade tools and donating them to the museum, Zhongli likes to keep some of them for collection. You could say your house also had a little museum in the other room.

• Romcom movies and soap operas. You can't change my mind that this is what you both spend your time watching as the snowstorm rages outside. 

[edwad]

To what extent do you think that a belief that communism would follow from the collapse of capitalism is an ideological assumption vs a conclusion based on empirical investigation?

i think it depends on the nature of the belief. lots of people seem to think that communism is inevitable due to iron historical laws and i think that's pretty silly, projecting a historically situated set of political preferences onto history itself. there's no reason why communism has to happen or even why capitalism had to happen. these developments can really only be understood retrospectively. i think this is "ideological" in a sense, and (among marxists) generally has something to do with an overly deterministic rendering of marx's work. i think elements of this are in marxs work, for sure, but that's definitely not all there is and i think many of his bold historical claims serve a propagandistic function rather than being honestly descriptive.

easy example would be the manifesto, where he makes some very strong claims about this stuff, like this one:

"The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

this begins with an attempt at describing a tendency based on a set of political economic assumptions which are falsifiable in all the ways that people like to make a fuss about, but it ends with a passionate claim about a historical inevitability. the latter claim doesn't necessarily follow from the former, and it would have to be shown why the bourgeoisie as the "involuntary promoter" of modern industry leads to an inevitable victory of a competing class (putting aside the complicating fact that a victorious proletariat is a non-proletariat), rather than a purely economic tendency of self-collapse. this kind of deterministic reading would actually run into conflict with the first sentence of the manifesto regarding history as a history of class struggles since no class struggle would be necessary for capitalism to end, and this is even how certain people read marxs later work like capital, where the "expropriators are expropriated", which is "accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital" rather than as a result of violent class struggle.

but if we were read this bit of the manifesto more generously (probably too generously), there is something to be said about how the fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat as equal inevitabilities is not necessarily the same as saying that they are in fact totally inevitable. they are either inevitable or they are not, but equally so. this could also comes into conflict with rendering of marx as an economic determinist, since the laws of capitalist production could lead to the dissolution of the system on their own, without any inevitable victory on the part of the proletariat, negating their assumed equality. it should also be noted then, that in order for this generous reading of this section to work (if it can), the "fall of the bourgeoisie" would likely have be taken as being of a particular sort. if the sun exploded tomorrow and ended capitalism forever, it could not be described so narrowly as the "fall of the bourgeoisie" but of the elimination of human life altogether. by fall, we would have to refer to it in the sense of the outcome of a competition between classes.

elsewhere in the text, marx also leaves room for a more open-ended approach, when he talks about the historical struggle between classes as "a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." floating the possibility of a "common ruin of the contending classes" expresses a very different kind of analysis than the purely economic determinism which can be teased out above. for there to exist a possibility which does not simply belong to the historical chain of revolutionary usurpations of power would suggest that the same could be true for us today. even if it's not exactly at the level being presented, this would in a sense be able to better account for things like the aforementioned explosion of the sun, or some other forces which exist and which we are unable to overcome (like a potentially catostrophic climate event). regardless, this attitude of historical openness is very different than what is found elsewhere in the text, and i think it can be located in various other forms later on in marxs life as well.

by 1882 when marx is writing the preface to the russian edition of the manifesto, he says

"The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian obshchina, though greatly undermined, yet a form of primeval common ownership of land, pass directly to the higher form of Communist common ownership? Or, on the contrary, must it first pass through the same process of dissolution such as constitutes the historical evolution of the West?

The only answer to that possible today is this: If the Russian Revolution becomes the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so that both complement each other, the present Russian common ownership of land may serve as the starting point for a communist development."

one of the interesting things about this is the first sentence where he talks about the aim of the manifesto as "proclam[ing] of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property", which is a one-sided framing of the problem and manages to put the "equally inevitable" proletarian victory to the side or simply subsumed into it. the latter probably makes the most sense, since he's here arguing that a russian revolution which would be made up of non-proletarian elements could have some revolutionary capacity toward communism, even if the proletariat on a world scale would still need to put in the work toward that aim. in each instance, he is talking to representatives of those elements. this is a political manifesto written to agitate and not simply a treatise of social science. this may get partly lost on 21st century readers, but the russian preface was written for the publication to be read by russian readers. the preface to the italian edition referenced italy as the first capitalist nation and asks its readers "Will Italy give us the new Dante, who will mark the hour of birth of this new, proletarian era?" etc.

it should be clear that there were real political stakes; that marx and engels were not simply describing something they saw around them. the empirical investigation was there in some sense and acted as a motivating force for action, but the particular calls on the revolutionary elements of each country which saw a translation captures the importance of political propaganda and revolutionary agency for the two authors. at times they felt a need to blur the differences between what must happen by iron historical law and what must happen or else we're ruined. this means that this famous document which has generated lots of ideas about what marxism is and how it relates to the historical struggle toward communism is full of theoretical ambivalences, and these exist in some way in many other texts by both marx and engels.

the tensions within and between texts give rise to misunderstandings about the need and possibility of communism, but i don't think that they are reducible to each other so that all claims about a future communism are necessarily ignorantly ideological. if there is a mass political will, and this is definitely what marx and engels were trying to generate with their work, then communism can be possible. the immanent tendencies of capital, which neither thinker really understood that well at the time of writing the manifesto (although it's held up fairly well in many ways), only add to the urgency of the need for such a movement. the destruction is all around us and will keep coming but we can't fall back on the inevitably of communism to save us without anyone ever having to lift a finger. the entire point is that we have to do it ourselves, otherwise the communist movement and its various mouthpieces (like marx and engels) would never even have to exist and communism could simply fall into our collective lap.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Fic: Away, Away

This was written for Day 13 of @hitsuhina-week! If you prefer, you can also read this on AO3. Which is my preference, because Tumblr keeps eating my spacing whether I use Rich Text or HTML so it looks absurd on here. >.>

Aftermath / Going on a Trip Together Hinamori Momo + Hitsugaya Toushirou Pre-Series

--

This will be the last time. 

(Whisper it, so he won't hear.)

--

Every spring, Junrinan finds its way to the western mountains. (The souls of Rukongai wander.) There is no grand procession: They disperse across the vast range, often alone and sometimes in twos. They are always careful not to cause disruption, because while one soul in a forest full of spirits generally isn't worth the effort, seven is a meal.

They are three. 

Soon, they will be two. Hinamori can't stop whispering her new name, hi na mo ri. It's early to be out here, but the snows were mild this year and new growth is already peeking from beneath the thick, rich leaf rot. She feels an affinity with this year's tender saplings, a feeling that grows hotter with every whispered repetition of her name. Her grandmother had given it to her, showed her how to write it. She'd studied her name harder than she had the exam.

Hinamori has an acceptance letter. In April, she is leaving. 

Hinamori nearly walks straight into a nettle spirit--the hair-eating kind--draped across the game path plain as day.

"Do you wanna be bald?" Toushirou grouses as he yanks her back just in time. "I guess it fits. You're acting like a blind old man." 

Hinamori blinks, brushes imagined hair from her face. It's the fifth time she's tried to walk straight through a spirit in as many days. 

"Studying is bad for your eyes," says Toushirou. He doesn't care for moony Hinamori. Momo had paid a lot more attention to what was in front of her. But she's Hinamori now. At least, that's the only name she'll write, dragging her thin stick through the dirt outside the house. So that's what he calls her.

Toushirou squeezes through a bumble of pot-bellied mushroom spirits and Hinamori follows him, stepping carefully into his tracks.

"You'll need to keep reading even when I'm not around. It'll go if you don't practice," she says.

Toushirou makes a noncommittal sound.

"I'll send you letters full of kanji and quiz you on them when I visit." I'll learn how to write them pretty, she promises, just like Baachan does.

"Will you write me back?" she asks.

"Probably not."

This hurts her. But Toushirou plans to go the rest of his life without writing a single thing. It's not personal.

"Why would I need to tell you what happens in Junrinan?" he says. "You already know."

--

And if I forget?

--

Life in Junrinan doesn't change. That's what Toushirou was promised. The winters are quiet and slow, and in spring they go to the mountains. Summers are for farming, and autumns for harvest. Then winters are quiet and slow again.

Spring passes with bracken and angelica in hand. It is counted in the spirals of ferns as their number grows in the baskets. Some are dried; some are steeped. Mostly, they are sold. Many of the men in Junrinan spend springtime waking before dawn to sprint to the mountain, forage the lowlands, and return to the village for evening revelries, but Toushirou and Hinamori and their grandmother have always spent the whole of the season between the trees. The mountains prefer it when you stay. 

This will be true no matter how long Hinamori is gone.

April 12th through July 20th, then our first break, she says, scratching numbers in the dirt. But Junrinan doesn't have dates the way the Academy does. She draws the way the trees will change. The change happens in a long straight line, and beyond July 20th there is an emptiness rather than a repetition. How do you draw an unwritten future?

Hinamori writes her name again.

--

In the spring, everything is full: Toushirou enjoys the wet green of it, the late snows and vernal flooding. The water flows down from the mountains ice cold and the forests are loud and thick with spirits.

The spirits have no names that are written and no faces that have ever stayed the same, unremembered but immemorial. They are loud. Most of them respect the borders of his body. They brush against his legs with thick wet fur or scrape his cheek with leathery wings. They coil around his throat, treating him like a tree or rock. Some of them are trees and rocks. They are the mountains and forest, just like the wandering souls of Junrinan. They all belong here, more or less.

Toushirou can see most of them. When the blurry ones pass through you, it's feverishly unpleasant for the split-second it happens and then is nothing at all. The blurry ones, Toushirou figures, aren't actually in this forest. They are like shadows at sunset, cast long and far from their bodies. Their true bodies roam a different world entirely.

That's what Hinamori wants to do. 

Hinamori used to clamor for shinigami stories any time one of them passed through town. She'd been told one time that all travelers carried stories and now expected it.

The shinigami never expected her. Unless commerce was involved they didn't tend to acknowledge souls, or even look at them. So they always seemed surprised by Hinamori, like it hadn't occurred to them that they'd meet a real, full person out here. Which is fair enough, Toushirou grudgingly allows--there are plenty of souls in Junrinan so old and staid they cannot move, nor speak. (Don't touch them. It's unlucky.)

We don't talk about those.

The shinigami talk story: The story of black dye. The story of a tall bathhouse. The story of grilled meat on sticks. The story of the time they saw a noble. The story of a big fish. The story of a bigger fish. The story of the bullet train. The story of my sister, who isn't very interesting but is the only thing that comes to mind right now sorry. The story of 19th seats should be paid more. The story of the soul who wanted a story. 

Almost none of the stories are about death.

"Little girls shouldn't go into those mountains," one shinigami once said, which is as close as a story ever came to it. "Nasty stuff in there. They're called Hollows, you know. Real bad guys."

The shinigami patted the sword at his hip. He'd just told Hinamori a story about the third son of a lesser noble whom everyone loved and thought deserved better than the shadows of his elder brothers. And how preposterous is it, really, that he should have to prove himself when his brothers never did? Pushed out here into the boonies, seeking honor and fame. He really feels for the guy. Don't you? Don't you?

"You seem to know a lot about 'this guy,'" Toushirou offered.

"I'm a master storyteller," said the shinigami.

I've killed a Hollow before, you know, boasted the master storyteller. He'd led a unit of twelve men into those mountains out there, which were so quiet you could hear your own heart beating. When you can hear your terror--that's when you're on the cusp of valor. His eyes lit up. I was the one who cut the mask, he said.

Twelve is obviously far too many (seven is a meal), and those mountains have never been quiet. Toushirou didn't think he'd really been.

In the spring, though, there's a dark scar where once there'd been a copse of trees. Shattered branches and burned ground. His grandmother says it smells like Hollow. 

"They see things differently," his grandmother half-explains, of the shinigami and their Hollows and the silence of their mountains. Of course this would seem a different place to them.

"They're idiots," says Toushirou, though suddenly he's not sure. The scar is hair-raising, and his stomach roils. Maybe they really shouldn't be out in the woods.

"The shinigami know more than you," says Hinamori, taking his hand in hers. She grips it tightly, reassuring, or maybe annoyed. Both. She has a lot of school spirit for someone who hasn't even been yet.

But she doesn't let go of his hand, even after they've returned to the cover of the live trees, kitsune fire nestled in the brambles at their feet.

Toushirou makes the mistake of noticing a spirit that tends to linger just out of sight. It feeds on your instinct to look, and it grows higher and higher the more you crane your neck, so sure you'll be able to sneak a glimpse of it. By the time you realize the trick, you've always been had. It's very annoying.

--

This will be the last time.

(Scream it.)

--

"It's so dark out here," says Hinamori, in spite of the kitsune and all the rest. Lots of spirits glow. She is still holding his hand.

Toushirou thinks of the small lamp Hinamori had bought to study by, the wild shadows it cast on the interior walls and the way it had made all hours bright. He thinks of all the hours she hadn't slept. All because some shinigami had told her a story about a school. 

Anything would seem dark by comparison. He can't remember the last time she hadn't had her lamp on when he went to bed.

Hinamori is going to snap the bones in his hand. He yelps. Tears prick in his eyes. "What's wrong with you?"

She doesn't let go, and then she doesn't let go.

"It's so quiet," she says faintly. Her free hand wavers over her heart protectively.

It's so dark. It's so quiet. Quiet enough to hear your terror.

Except it's not. It's not dark.

It's not quiet.

The forest is full, air thick with chirrups and buzzing, screeching, hooting, chittering. Bodies clack and bones shudder. Reeds whistle and something large makes a whomping, resonating tone. Foxfire hisses as it makes sparks, throws phosphorous motes that dance high above. A heartbeat glow marches up the ridged spine of a lizard spirit. The forest is as it has always been.

Toushirou's eyes widen. 

"You can't hear them anymore."

To Hinamori, it is all darkness and silence. 

She sinks to the ground, burying her head in her knees as though to hide from the quiet. From the black. She drops his hand.

"Momo--"

She shakes her head. She opens her hands to the sky like she's waiting for a bird to land. For a split second, a small warm flame billows from her palms. 

Then the entire forest catches.

The thought had been innocent enough--to be her own light in the darkness, conquer her fear. But the forest only hears the conquering. It's the kitsune who don't take kindly to Hinamori's light. Their fire screeches up and outward and then all the spirits are in frenzy. A meal! scream some; and others, a threat! A danger to be expunged. A strange thing not of this forest, these mountains.

Outsider! the world around them hisses. Away.

away, away

Hinamori screams as the flames leap forward--the claws, the vines, the terrors and all in between. She throws herself in front of Toushirou. 

Toushirou can't find his voice at all. The wide whites of his eyes feel the propulsive gust of the forest coming down on them. On Hinamori. No! he can't shout, cold fear coiling over his frozen legs and pricking at his shoulder blades. Something serpentine rushes past him and he's on the ground. His head smacks hard against a writhing tree root and he tastes bile, feels nothing. 

Hears everything.

away

When he wakes, snow is falling, wet and sloppy. Kitsune are nibbling at the singed edges of a hanafuda. Hinamori is in her grandmother's arms. She's crying.

--

Before Hinamori started studying, with her bright lamp and her long nights and her feverish poetry scratched into the ground, before the hunger came, she'd woken one morning to a futon streaked with her blood. Her grandmother said that this was womanhood.

"The tea will stop the bleeding," she assured a tearful Hinamori as they scrubbed at her futon, pinking the waters. Toushirou beat at the stain with his feet, splashing everywhere.

"You don't have to touch it," Hinamori had said quietly, her eyes fixed on the water. "It's my mess."

"Baachan said I have to help," Toushirou objected. "Besides, am I supposed to just sit here and watch you bleed?"

--

Just one last time.

--

Hinamori isn't hurt, but she is in pain. The forest doesn't want her anymore. (She is leaving.)

"The forest sees them differently," his grandmother says, the other half of her earlier explanation. "Them," meaning shinigami. "Them," meaning Hinamori, now.

Shinigami see and are seen differently. They belong differently. Toushirou had only ever distinguished them by their black clothes, and sometimes their attitude. But his grandmother talks about reiryoku, about reiatsu, about the realms the shinigami travel through and the spirits they are blind to. The spirits that belong to different worlds than theirs, even when they're side by side. Some worlds are bound to one another, tied by fate and duty; others are repelled.

As Hinamori's reiatsu blossomed with her womanhood, slowly folding outward past her skin, beyond her body, her worlds were chosen for her. Like the bleeding, there's a tea to help this, too, but it's not the same. 

There is no going back.

"What're you looking at," Toushirou scowls at her. He's not sure what to do with her pain. There's nothing he can do for her pain. But she's looking at him differently, a little less like Hinamori and a little more like the rest of Junrinan does, and that scares him.

She asks him if he'd felt anything. Something cold.

She's asked him before. Every day since the incident, she's asked him.

His answer is always the same. No. Just fear.

He should be helping his grandmother. They're here in the forest for a reason, and that hasn't changed; they have foraging to do. But he doesn't want to leave Hinamori alone. 

"Don't be afraid of it, Shiro-chan," says Hinamori. Hinamori, who's now afraid of the dark.

Hinamori, who is leaving.

--

She doesn't have a choice. When her power comes into her she knows there is only one place she can go. It's a place she has always wanted to go. (She has always wanted to go places.) But now she has to.

She smiles. 

If she is going to go, she's going to fly. She will love, and yearn, and cry. She will give all of herself to the future before her, even when it means that precious things can be only memory. If there is something Hinamori leaves in him when she goes, it's flight. 

Someday, Toushirou will remember to remember that.

--

"Will you write me?" she asks.

--

--

(You will be written.)

--

She returns for the summer, then is gone again. Winter, then gone again. But she doesn't come home for the spring. They'll be going to the realm of the living. They will fight Hollows, just like the Gotei 13. She explains the meaning and stroke order of the characters, go tei,  though she doesn't explain what the Gotei 13 actually is. That part must already seem obvious to her. Shinigami stuff. That's all Toushirou will ever need to know. Seems pretentious.

When Junrinan returns to the mountains this year, Toushirou and his grandmother stay behind. "It's dangerous," she says. She squeezes his shoulders.

It's dangerous now. 

There is no going back.

Junrinan may not change, but life does, and by the second summer, Hinamori has mostly forgotten the shapes of the forest spirits. Toushirou is forgetting them, too. 

The difference is, Hinamori has found replacements. She talks about incantations and sword stances, friendships and histories. She has been to the realm of the living. It's only been a year, and already they have nothing in common but their memories, ever-receding. 

Sometimes she wakes up screaming. She doesn't say why.

--

Toushirou dreams of a chill ripping through him. He dreams of a place where there are no mountains as far as the eye can see.

--

He wakes to Hinamori.

[passionpluto]

4 and 10 for MLP

4) Do you have a NoTP in your fandom? Are they a popular OTP?

go back to sleep coco x mosely isn't real it only exists in your imagination

Warning: this is gonna be petty as all hell, but I'm going to have to say Sparity for one big reason--my first ex shipped it hard. He wrote Sparity fics and everything, and got fairly big in the fandom for doing so. Now, I was always a little uncomfy with Sparity due to the age gap, but was fine with it just being a cute little crush, but after we broke up, I suddenly found myself losing any love I might've had for it. I still think Spike and Rarity are very cute as friends, especially as Rarity grows to view Spike as an equal rather than just as her other friend's kid brother, but fan content of them anything other than that is an instant turn-off for me.

On a much shorter note, I've also never liked Spike and Sweetie Belle together (even when I did tolerate Sparity) for a much different, yet similar reason. Sweetie Belle is her own filly and deserves to be evaluated on her own merits, and I feel like that would be just about impossible when your BF spent a good chunk of his childhood crushing on your older sister. Obviously, Spike wouldn't mean to do that, but I feel like it'd be almost impossible to not have these types of insecurities in a situation like this, because intrusive thoughts are assholes. Plus it just reminds me of that whole thing in Great Expectations when the losing childhood friend in the love triangle gets together with the dude's brother-in-law, and as an English major, I'd really prefer not to remember that Charles Fucking Dickens wrote that kind of end-of-romance-novel plot twist crap.

in short my headcanon is that spike is a short king, a bisexual king, and that's he's in love with a...well, you get the idea

10) Most disliked arc? Why?

The OG Crystal Empire arc, hands down. While the Pony of Shadows arc also disappointed me a bit for similar reasons as I'm about to go into here, it saved itself from this fate by at least having some pieces of interesting lore, mostly with regards to Stygian. The idea of the one normal guy in a group of legendary magical people turning to dark magic to catch up to their level and having that backfire on him is heartbreaking to me, so I'm able to forgive the rest of the arc's shortcomings as a result.

However, the Crystal Empire arc...didn't really have that much lore going for it. While the show progressed a bit towards it later on, I found myself really not caring about Twilight's test during the two-parter compared to all the lore the episode could have had.

The Crystal Empire itself is a really fascinating concept--imagine a land made entirely of crystal, where even the beings themselves are made of crystal, ruled over by a dark, shadowy king with Sauron vibes. Sounds cool, right? Let's not focus on that and instead focus on the Mane Six setting up a festival! How does Cadence tie into this empire's history? Let's literally never explain that outside of expanded universe stories fans have to go out of their way to read! And nerf Shining Armor again for his second two-parter in a row! All while airing copious amounts of Gak commercials! (God, does anyone still remember that meme?)

And speaking of remembering stuff, does anyone remember that cool-ass thing Legend of Korra did where it cut to the first Avatar for a couple of episodes, allowing us to learn about the ancient stuff in the ancient world before going back and showing the implications it had on the modern world? If the Crystal Empire arc had been like that, if we'd gotten to see how the Empire worked before Twilight's test, the story we got in the S3 premiere would have been so much better as a result. And who knows, maybe that's the direction things could've gone if S3 hadn't been a lower-budget half-season due to Equestria Girls. I like to think there's a universe somewhere where we somehow got Equestria Girls, a full Crystal Empire arc, and at least 3 more Babs-focused episodes in S3, but them's the breaks. Blame Lightning Dust for glitching out and attempting to destroy the VR used to create the AI ponies, causing the programmers/writers to run out of budget for the rest of S3 (yes, this is an actual fanfic plot I wrote).

I never really realized how much of an issue I had with this arc until I sat down to put it into words and now...yeah, taken as its own story without later seasons in mind, it doesn't really have many redeeming qualities to me. At least The Success Song helps pump me up before tests, though!

[jafndaegur]

Blue and Grey [where's my angel?]

Jumin x MC

a/n: Reverse Isekai. If you know the song; then you know the song.

Where is my angel?

The end of a tiring day.

"Someone come and save me, please"

Is overshadowed by a sigh...

MC stared up at the ceiling, her phone held limply in her grasp. The Mystic Messenger app blinked sporadically with the "Normal Route" logo. Her lips wobbled and she hadn't realized the sob that wobbled in her chest. 

Everything had felt so real. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that she had spent eleven days with the most amazing people that she would know in her lifetime.

She fell in love with the most amazing man she would know in her lifetime.

Her breath quivered and a small squeak came out with her exhale. 

Living and in the flesh, Jumin had been real—every word, every touch, every bit. Same for the others. So why was it now that she suddenly woke up from the dream? Now the real world heaved a sigh and existed all around her as it had before the game. She didn't think miracles were real, but being transported into the world of the game had been a blessing. It saved her and in turn she was able to save someone she loved.

Except now.

MC turned off her phone, unable to bear the sound of the upbeat music or the warm yellow glow of the videogame.

Little time had passed since she'd been brought in and out from the videogame world, less than eleven days (probably less than eleven hours even). No one had worried about her, no one cared. She bit her lip and forced herself to not think about the near-empty contacts list on her phone.

She was forced back into reality and she would live. As she always had.

The color that had been so suddenly and vibrantly splashed into her life was striped away with the harsh scent of acetone and paint remover. 

She walked to work. Her manager greeted her with a practice smile and gave her the laundering list for the day. MC nodded mutely, pulled on her apron and went to the back of the dry cleaning facility. The party recipients were gone, and the lavish ballroom the RFA held their party in also dissipated. Only the sound of chirring machinery and the rustle of clothes, either in bags or not, now existed. MC stared at the rows of slowly shifting suits on the conveyor racks and wondered how often Jumin took his suits to a dry-cleaner. She momentarily fancied the idea of him just purchasing a new suit everytime he dirtied and old one—and she giggled. It was the first time laughing since she came back home. But the immediate pang in her heart at the idea of Jumin's bemused grin and his narrowed grey eyes caused her to swallow back a cry. Because he totally would find her notion silly, before saying something like "I only have the finest launderers in all of Korea dry-clean my suits. And I do leave a mean tip, if I say so myself, darling."

MC hated this.

She found that the world existed in faded hues of blue and grey. The sky glimmered in a dull linen blue, brushing up against the greyed horizon while the sun faded from view. Walks were the only thing MC found she could stomach after long twelve hour shifts. She hadn't the heart to delete the Mystic Messenger game, but she couldn't look at the sprites or the characters knowing she'd interacted with them as real breathing people. So it was a little comfort, but the cool breeze and the nighttime air in the city made her feel closer to her RFA friends even though they weren't there.

City nights in general made her feel closer to Jumin.

MC wondered if in some other universe, or world, or timeline, Jumin lived...missing her the way she missed him. He was far too expressive to be a simple videogame character after all.

She wondered if she was just a game to them too, a little person all coded up nice and neatly for them to choose their preferred routes.

A park between her work place and her apartment sat quaintly in the city. It was safe and hardly used at this time of night. For the past few months since returning, MC had made it a habit to eat dinner here, enjoy the night, and pretend she could see the stars. Tonight was no different. Pulling her thermos from her backpack and a bottle of water, she found a comfy spot on a children's jungle gym and sat down to eat.

Cars honked and neon signs buzzed. People walked on the streets. People talked loudly. She could hear it all from her little spot, and it felt almost nostalgic. For all the secrecy, Rika's apartment had sat in a fairly occupied part of Seoul, and from the little one bedroom MC had always been able to hear the city life.

She could hear it too, from Jumin's penthouse.

Closing her eyes, she tried to picture her friends. 

Zen was probably at rehearsals now. He worked late into the night, practicing, doing his best for whatever upcoming role he may be participating in. Jaehee was probably still at work too—although MC had thoroughly chewed Jumin out for working his poor secretary too hard—since she'd been allowed a revision of her schedule, late nights turned into noontime sign-ins for work instead of the usual eight o'clock.

Yoosung and Seven probably weren't doing too differently. Yoosung was probably causing another bout of sleep deprivation by playing a LOLOL tournament. Seven was also probably sleep deprived, but from doing secret spy stuff rather than having fun. She hoped regardless, that they were doing well.

And Jumin?

"And Jumin," MC sighed, sinking her head onto her knees and squeezing her eyes shut.

A deep and familiar baritone followed. "And me?"

She'd done this frequently, in her return. Imagine him there next to her, hear his voice, feel the ghost of his touch.

A warm hand gently rested on the top of her head, slowly smoothing out her hair.

She wrapped her arms around her legs. "You're probably at home, staring out at those stupid French doors in the living room watching the nightlife live on. Elizabeth the Third is probably at your feet, being the cute thing that she is before going off and finding something shiny that catches her eye."

There's an answering chuckle and her breath shatters in her chest.

Please, she begged. This isn't funny, this is just cruel.

There's quiet and the presence of the hand on her head gone. MC knew she was alone again. She won't go home yet, she needed a minute to collect herself. 

But then there's a shuddering breath and the most gentle murmur. "And if I were to say I'm beside you again?"

MC reeled back so terribly that she fell off the jungle gym. A sharp yelp escaped her as she landed on her tailbone and stars circled in front of her eyes. Hurried footsteps and the panicked shout of her name met her ears—she stared in a daze as Jumin hurried and crouched before her, worrying over her.

She gazed dumbly.

"My love, are you hurt?" Jumin's voice is urgent, and he gently lifted her arms, her ankles, twisting her shoulders, checking for injuries.

MC stares and stares and stares until she's squinting.

To his credit, Jumin bears her scrutiny without flinching. Just that same urgent and worried look.

"You're here." She finally breathed.

Relief visibly washed over Jumin and he relaxed. His hand, it's warm—so, so warm—gently cupped her cheek and MC leaned into the touch without question.

Jumin's nose brushed against hers. "I'm sorry it took so long."

"That's what you're apologizing for?" MC whispered, not knowing if she was supposed to laugh or cry or both.

A velvety laugh rumbled in his chest and he rested his forehead against hers. "Darling, I can't apologize for you being clumsy."

MC choked, shaking her head. Her hands tenderly cupped his face, thumbs sweeping along his jaw. Jumin closed his eyes and pressed a little closer to her, his breath feathering along her cheek with every heave of his chest.

[kingreywrites]

The Smolder Tragedy

Fandom: Tangled

Word Count: 3314

Summary:��A very concussed and very out of it Eugene Fitzherbert comes to a devastating conclusion about his smolder. His kidnappers are not all that sympathetic about it.

Note: that title is so corny god asgfdgh anyway, this is a self-indulgent hurt/comfort fic, but there’s quite a bit of hurt!! So be warned that there is talk of a concussion, some violence (because he’s kidnapped), and also a mention of spiked water (he’s mostly fine though but I’d rather be safe)

Read on ao3

Now that he was thinking about it, Eugene realised that the smolder never... truly worked on anyone. Well, when he was younger, adults tended to go easier on him if he made a somewhat cute face at them, and in the following years, doing it never hurt his chances with the people who were already attracted to him. But neither of these facts actually attested of the efficiency of the smolder in itself, and if Rapunzel was left particularly unimpressed, Eugene wasn't sure anyone had ever really swooned because of it.

Oh, the demon Rapunzel from the weird mirror dimension did swoon that one time. Was that a good sign, or a bad one?

"The hell are you talking about?" someone growled, entering the room loudly and making Eugene's headache worse, if that was even possible.

That guy was one of the reasons Eugene was thinking about his smolder's actual abilities - or lack thereof. Because see, if the smolder worked, which he was now doubting, he could simply use it on this guy, and that would make him swoon, and Eugene would use the distraction to get free from the chair he was tied on, and get out of here quickly. But Eugene didn't think the smolder would work. Not because Mr Beetle here (lovingly named after the bug which landed on his head during Eugene's kidnapping - he'll get to that part later) was immune to his charms, but because maybe... perhaps... the smolder had never been effective?

This was devastating news. Truth really was the heaviest burden a man could bear.

Beetle grabbed his hair and pulled his head back roughly, making Eugene see stars and forget, for a moment, the whole smolder dilemma. But then he was being yelled at things he could barely understand between the buzzing in his ears and the concussion he got earlier - without forgetting the stuff they made him drink that made his head all fuzzy and his thoughts completely muddled - and he couldn't help but wonder if he could smolder his way out of here. That'd be nice. It had been what, four days since they got their hands on him? Five? Eugene was bored now.

"If-," he coughed, feeling like the hoarse voice he could hear wasn't his own, "if I tried to seduce you, would you break my nose?"

Going by the way his head was slammed back again, Eugene took it as a yes. That was a shame, truly. He knew that his life was different today, that he had changed for the better and was now the Captain of Corona's Guard, so really, he didn't need the smolder - but he loved that silly little trick. It felt like discovering that Santa wasn't real all over again. Not that he ever believed in Santa, since the matrons didn't see fit to talk about that particular tradition when everyone knew that orphans wouldn't get Christmas gifts, but that's what Eugene thought it must feel like.

His head hurt a lot.

A big hand tipped his chin up, since he had been looking at his pants and the stains on them (would he be able to get the blood out?), and he realised that Beetle was trying to make him drink that weird stuff again. The one that made his head feel like it was floating above his shoulders, and made him feel warm in the most disgustingly sweaty way. Eugene hated it. So he kept his lips as tightly closed as he could, and trashed in the chair to make it more difficult on that goon.

This was becoming ridiculous. The fact that he even got kidnapped already hurt enough as it was - they got the best of him after a very exhausting day, and pointed a crossbow at his heart before hitting him so hard over the head he was pretty sure he stayed unconscious for a few hours straight... which Rapunzel would probably think was pretty concerning. For his part, he was more annoyed about the constant headache than anything. Mostly, he couldn't believe he got kidnapped.

He didn't even remember if anyone had seen him, and hoped no one had gotten hurt during the whole ordeal. In any case, he was pretty embarrassed and, to add insult to injury, they didn't even care about him. He was Captain of the Guard for god's sake, you'd think that would make him interesting enough, but no, they only wanted him to pressure the royal family.

Being used as leverage sucked. Thinking that they might hurt the people he loved by using him made him feel sick, even more than their weird drugged water did.

"If you keep being difficult you're gonna regret it," Beetle threatened, and Eugene would have told him that he was the one who would regret stuff soon, if he hadn't been also preoccupied with keeping his mouth shut. Which, ironically, was something people had asked of him a lot in his life, and that he had always refused to do - until someone tried to force him to keep it open. He never did like authority, after all. The matrons would always tell him that he was a troublemaker of the worst kind, and that someday, life would get back at him for the chaos he created. They were yet to be proved right about that one but-

Beetle punched him in the gut, making Eugene gasp and cough in pain, before his nose was pinched and he was forced to swallow the water, nearly choking on it.

"Rude," he noted weakly when it was over, his throat on fire as he heaved. Already, he could feel the fuzziness coming back with a vengeance, his vision blurring at the edges because of whatever mysterious compound they forced him to drink. He'd have to ask Varian about it. The kid would know, certainly, or would at least be excited to research it, and it was fun when Varian was excited. He still had that weird maniacal villain vibe mixed with his genuine and adorable love for sciency things, and that was an interesting combination to see in action.

The door to Eugene's cell was slammed shut and, in the dim light, he understood that he was alone once again. Beetle didn't even say goodbye. It was okay, though, because Eugene didn't think he could have answered without puking - the entire world was swimming in front of his eyes. Closing them only made everything even more unsteady, and now Eugene wondered if he could even try to do a good smolder in that state. He couldn’t feel his face.

His eyes were heavy, and it didn't take long before he passed out again.

------

Next time Eugene woke up, it was to the sound of yelling outside the door of his cell, loud and definitely not the kind of voices he wanted to hear. Maybe it was stupid, but each time he opened his eyes, he hoped to find Rapunzel here, ready to rescue him, but it hadn't happened… yet.

Trying to raise his head only awakened the ache in his neck and back from the terrible position he was in - he hated sleeping on chairs. Being homeless for a good part of his life had taught him that the bare ground was always preferable, but he didn't think he could argue about his sleeping conditions with his kidnappers. He pulled on the rope that was keeping his hands tied behind his back, and noticed that it was giving a little. If he could just-

"Your plan better work!" someone yelled, startling him - but it was still coming from behind the door. "You don't realise what we're risking with this!"

"Of course it'll work! Do you really think that the son-in-law of the King and the husband of the Princess is worthless? They're gonna listen to us because they'll want him back."

That was… touching, in a strange way. Not that Eugene enjoyed being taken for ransom, or whatever it was they wanted to do, but it did remind him that he had a family, and that they would fight to get him back. Rapunzel was probably worried out of her mind, right now, and this was enough to spur him into action again, because he didn't want to simply wait here for rescue like an idiot.

"What if they attack us?" the scared guy yelled again, as Eugene pulled on his bounds again, ignoring the sharp sting of the rope cutting into his skin, and his ever-present nausea. "What if- what if instead of paying, the guards find us and destroy our base?"

In Eugene's opinion, the guards weren't really the threat here - this guy didn't want to know what Rapunzel would do to him if she found them. The thought was enough to make him chuckle, which in turn made him realise that the weird water might still be having an effect on him, because he hadn't managed to keep himself quiet. Not great.

His fingers fumbled with the knot he could feel, trying to get it to loosen even more. Unfortunately, the door of his cell -more like a closet than a cell to be honest- was thrown open, and he had to act as innocent as possible.

Going by the glare he received, he was doing a poor job of it.

The new guy (he'd call him Martin, because he had a Martin face) seemed to enjoy kicking him around a bit more. The only silver lining was that he seemed intent on kicking his ribs, and consequently left his poor head alone. Still not the best, but Eugene would take it. He didn't have much choice anyway, since Martin decided to greet him with his fists today.

"Feeling better yet?" Eugene breathed when he thought it was over. He earned another kick for the trouble.

"You better hope they pay what we ask of them," Martin snarled, way too close for Eugene's comfort. "Because I can't say that I won't enjoy killing you if it comes to that."

"Aww, I'm touched, truly," was all Eugene could say, before a hand ended up around his throat, and he couldn't talk anymore. He vaguely heard Martin threatening him again, but honestly, the guy should realise that it was difficult to be afraid of him when Eugene was barely conscious enough to understand him.

It went down the same way as it always did, these days. Eugene was forced to drink that damned drugged water -it was getting more disgusting each time-, and he couldn't breathe, and the Martin guy said something about hurting Rapunzel, and if you think you're gonna be able to touch her you've got another thing coming you assho-

And Eugene lost consciousness. Again.

------

When he woke up again, Eugene couldn’t breathe. The world was loud, too loud, his vision was swimming and the room spinning under him, and he couldn't- it was as if his breaths were getting stuck in his ribcage, and was he still being choked, what-

"Hey, Eugene, it's okay, look at me-"

Dragging in air painfully, he opened his eyes to a slit, meeting the frantic and oh so green ones of- Rapunzel?

"Come on, it's okay, breathe with me," she said, voice low, and he listened to her - how could he not? For a moment, when it felt like he was still dangerously tethering on the edge of choking, he wondered if she was even real, or if it was all a dream conjured by the lack of oxygen. Then, she brushed his hair back, her palm warm and tangible on his cheek, and it felt real enough that he melted into it.

"That's it," she encouraged him gently, one hand resting lightly on his heaving chest. "That's it, breathe. I won't let them hurt you anymore."

He couldn't hold back a nervous chuckle at that, but going by the pinch of her eyebrows, that wasn't the right reaction. After a few seconds, when he finally felt like his lungs weren't about to explode, he tried to smile at her. It only seemed to worry her more.

Her fingers trailed along his jaw, tracing what he knew were dark bruises on his skin. She went higher, to his hair, and touched something that immediately made him flinch.

"Sorry, sorry, I-" she exclaimed quickly, pushing his hair away again. "I'm gonna get you out of here."

His perceptions were still blurred, as if he was underwater, but he could hear now the sounds of fighting and chaos coming from behind the door. Rescue. He was being rescued - Rapunzel was rescuing him. He knew she would do it.

"Well, I wish I had been a little quicker," Rapunzel said, her voice wobbly.

"You're just in time Sunshine," he whispered, his throat raw.

"Am I?"

He didn't like the self-deprecation in her tone, nor the worry that didn't seem able to leave her features, and he felt guilty for being the cause of it. If he hadn't been kidnapped-

"Eugene? Eugene, stay with me," Rapunzel asked, with an urgency that made him realise he had closed his eyes. Huh. He was dizzy. "I know, I'm sorry, just- I'm gonna free you, okay?"

He blinked, trying to look at her so she would stop sounding so… scared. She was fumbling with the ropes holding his left hand in place. There was the sound of an explosion outside, right as she got rid of the first one, and she threw an indecipherable look at the door.

He wanted… He wanted her to stop looking so sad. He didn't like it when she was sad. Could he do something about it? Well-

"The smolder doesn't work," he mumbled dejectedly. Rapunzel was taking care of his bound legs now, though he didn't remember her freeing his right hand. He moved it slowly, feeling as if the limb wasn't his own, and wondered how much the weird water was still affecting him.

"Weird water?" Rapunzel repeated. He wasn't sure how to not voice all his thoughts aloud, apparently, which he's sure his dad would find amusing.

Since Rapunzel was still looking at him, Eugene took a few seconds to remember her question and simply hummed, head swimming. That seemed to make her even more unhappy, and he could get disliking the water, but he didn't like when Rapunzel was unhappy. "Do you... think the smolder ever, uh... worked?" he asked, trying to distract her.

"I'm sure it did," she answered, in the same gentle tone she used on people she disagreed with.

"It- it never worked on you, though. And it wouldn't have worked on Beetle, or- or- Martin," he pressed. His tongue was heavy in his mouth, and now his feet were free but he really didn't have the energy to try and get up. He didn't want to puke on Rapunzel, too.

She didn't reply. Instead, she looped one of his arms around her neck, and braced her hand against his ribs. He winced, and she apologised quietly, but before he could try to argue that he didn't think he could do it, she made him stand up swiftly, grip tightening around him when his knees inevitably buckled. He closed his eyes tightly, ears ringing painfully and stomach churning, and he was grateful that he could count on Rapunzel to not let him fall on his face.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she kept repeating, adjusting his weight to stop him from sliding down further. "I know it's hard, but I'll get you to safety, I promise, just hang on-"

Eugene could guess that he really didn't look great if she was that desperate to comfort him. To be fair, he didn't feel great either. He could barely follow her words, couldn't stand up on his own, and had to focus all his energy into not being sick as Rapunzel helped him walk. It clearly wasn't his best day.

He tried to regain his footing, so she didn't have to drag him with her, but his legs were shaky and he nearly fell again. He thought Rapunzel was going to toss him over her shoulder and run, which he knew she could do, and he also knew his body wouldn't appreciate as much as usual given his current dizziness, but that was exactly the moment Maximus arrived to the rescue. Or maybe they arrived to Maximus? There were more people around them, more noises and voices too, and Eugene couldn’t follow anything of what was happening. He thought he heard Lance, and felt another hand holding him up, but all he could focus on was Rapunzel being here, and Rapunzel talking to him, and calling his name, his one beacon of light when the pain in his head grew to be too much to bear.

He felt her hand in his, and realised that he had been laid down somewhere. He wanted to reassure her, but couldn’t do much more but feebly squeeze her fingers, hoping she would understand. And then, because he was tired and in pain, and because he knew that, now that she was here, he was going to be okay, Eugene passed out.

------

“You are evil,” Eugene moaned, hiding his face under his pillow while Rapunzel laughed innocently.

"What, I'm trying to help!" she smiled, coming to sit next to him on the bed. He felt the mattress dip under her weight, and took a peek at her, groaning again when he saw how smug she seemed. "I even made flyers and everything!"

She didn't seem to care about the annoyed look he threw her way, instead putting a bunch of papers in his hands. On it, his face, lips pursued and eyebrows raised, with the text asking the people of Corona to come test his “infamous smolder” by themselves. At this moment, Eugene would have preferred to have his old wanted posters thrown in his face - it would be way less embarrassing than… this.

“Come on Eugene, what better way to know for certain than to experiment? You seemed really bummed out about your smolder!”

“I wasn’t in my right mind,” he grumbled. “You can’t hold me accountable for my concussed ramblings!”

Her expression softened at that, and her hand came to caress his cheek, gently trailing up to the bandages still around his wound. Her touch was soft enough to not sting, and he couldn’t keep up his facade of annoyance when it was so obvious she simply wanted to make him laugh.

“I love you, you know?” he breathed, and she had a second to look pleasantly surprised before she leant down and kissed him.

“I love you too, Eugene,” she smiled fondly.

“You’re the only person I care to seduce anyway,” he laughed. “I guess I’ll have to live with the smolder being ineffective.”

“If that helps,” she murmured, climbing fully on the bed to lie down next to him, “I feel pretty seduced by you already.”

“Ah yeah?” he grinned. “Well, I’m pretty seduced by you too, Sunshine. You’re my hero after all,” he said, and though he had intended it as a joke, his tone was too earnest to be mistaken as anything but the truth. He could still see glimpses of guilt in Rapunzel’s expression, when he knew she had done everything in her power to find him as quickly as she could - he’d repeat it as much as she needed to finally see it too.

Rapunzel watched him, before cupping his cheek and bringing their lips together once again. He knew he would need to rest again soon, and that his constant headache would probably spike if he didn’t, but for now, he kissed her back, and it felt like everything was alright again. Because it was, in all the ways that mattered.

She saved him, and they were together - he wouldn’t ask for anything more.

[2manyfandoms2count]

I love you (not) - Chapter 3

@marichatmay's prompt for today was "dirt", which legally requires Chat to eat dirt, right? Anyway, that happens. His brain is a little distracted, you see. Hope you enjoy!

First | Previous | AO3 | Next

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Chapter 3: In which the universe might not be working against Chat breaking up with Marinette, but the author sure is

This has gone too far , Chat thought as he marched determinedly towards Marinette’s skylight. However fun lunch at her parents, and then their little movie hangout had been, he couldn’t let this… “relationship” go any further. His speech had been stalled enough, by a whole week and a half, and not entirely because of him; sure, he’d procrastinated it a little, but Nathalie and her zeal for filling his schedule were the main culprits, as well as a couple of ill-timed Akumas and last-minute Kitty section band practises. It was like the universe didn’t want their budding romance to end.

He pushed the thought aside. There was no romance between him and Marinette, or at least, not on his side. Which is why he needed to talk to her: he needed to prevent her from getting too invested in their relationship. She’d only end up getting hurt, and he would never forgive himself for it.

But what if she gets upset now ? A little voice piped up in his head. He came to a halt, and traced back his steps. Then you’ll be there to protect her from the butterflies , the reasonable part of his brain chimed in . He turned around and started walking again.

But what if that doesn’t work? Will you be able to fight with the knowledge that it was all your fault? The first voice nagged again. Yes, since I’ll be able to fix it. Ladybug and I will do what we usually do and save her.

He paced the balcony as the figurative angel and demon bickered on his shoulder, both making fairly good points as to why he should or should not break up with her.

It’s not a real relationship, just ghost her, she knows you have other stuff to do.

That wouldn’t be right and you know it.

What if this is a bad time, though?

But what if this is a good time?

His dilemma was so loud that he didn’t think about what it might have sounded like for Marinette, if she was in her room. His indecision was getting so infuriating that he stopped looking where he walked. Why was this so difficult?

What if you stopped being stupid and realised that you actually like her? The thought blindsided him, and not just because he could have sworn that it had been formulated in Plagg's voice. It caused him to miscalculate his next step, and before he knew it he was tripping on a potted plant.

Both him and it came crashing down with a loud thunk and a yelp, and he realised with horror, as he scrambled to his feet, that the plant it had contained not only had its roots out, but that it had landed right under him, and didn’t look too healthy.

“Crap…” He shot up and tried to repair his mistake, but soon realised the pot had broken in its fall.

He looked around him to see if there was a spare pot lying around, but failing to spot one, changed his strategy. He started pushing the earth into a neat pile to cover the roots and also to make sure the balcony didn’t look too messy. He wondered if there was a flower shop, or any shop where he could buy a replacement container nearby, and if maybe he could just pop out before anybody noticed, what on earth could he even do with all this-

“Chat Noir? What are you doing here?” Marinette had cautiously peeked out of her skylight when she’d heard the commotion, anticipating an Akuma and trying to figure out what to do if there was indeed one, and had pushed it all the way open when she’d realised who it was who’d been lurking on her roof.

Chat Noir panicked as he heard her voice, and did the only logical thing that came to his mind to get rid of the mess: he took the handful of earth he was holding, and shoved it in his mouth.

“No, Chat!!” Marinette voiced the thought that his brain deigned to formulate just as he tasted the dirt. His eyes widened and he spat it out, barely registering Marinette hopping out of her room and coming to pat him on the back to help him. “What on Earth were you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he wheezed.

“Hang on, I’ll get you some water.” She disappeared through the trapdoor and was back before he could put his escape plan to action. It was just too embarrassing to stay.

He gargled the contents of the glass and spat it out, wincing at the... green taste that remained. There was no better adjective for it. He supposed it was well deserved.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, looking at his feet sheepishly.

“For what?” Marinette asked, before her eyes landed on the plant. The lack of pot and her frantic attempts to help him had destabilised it, and it lied horizontally again. The colour drained from her cheeks. “Oh. Uncle Wang’s Magnolia.”

Chat winced at her worried expression. “Can I do anything to help?”

“I think I might have a pot downstairs that I can replace it with. I just need to be discreet, if Maman finds out that it survived its journey from Shanghai, but that it couldn’t survive a day on my balcony…” Marinette nervously chewed on her bottom lip.

“She’d be rightfully annoyed.” Chat nodded. He felt his guilt pink his cheeks.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do…”

Chat Noir wasn’t sure involving him in a plan was a great idea after the mess he’d made, but he followed Marinette’s instructions nonetheless, anxious to repair his mistake.

“There.” Marinette rubbed the dirt off of her hands when they were done with a satisfied smile. There was still tension in her shoulders, though. “I think I might have to hide it a little for the next week or so, just so she doesn’t notice the wilted leaves, but it should be okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, don’t worry.” She relaxed a little as she saw his pleading eyes. “Anyway, you literally preferred to eat dirt rather than answer my questions, what brings you here?”

“Oh, erm, I needed to talk to you about, well, erm… us.” Chat twiddled his thumbs awkwardly.

Marinette froze. She’d looked out for Chat Noir during the days after their “date”, and had been relieved not to see him around. She’d prodded the topic slightly as Ladybug, and given his lack of response, she’d concluded that Chat had given up on their relationship, and had filed the whole ordeal in a “we’ll laugh about it someday” part of her brain. She’d thought that the next time she’d see him as a civilian, they’d be back to normal. She realised that she might have been a little too prompt in moving on.

Chat noticed his friend tense up again, and decided he couldn’t go through with his plan. Hey, I came to tell you that I don’t love you and that I’m breaking up with you - and by the way, I almost killed a plant that came from half a world away. Bye! Really didn’t sound so great.

“Us?” Marinette prompted.

“Yeah, us.” Chat shook away his thoughts. “I, er… Realised that I haven’t been in touch much recently, and I wanted to apologise.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been really busy too, so, I understand.” Marinette smiled sweetly. It did sound like her kitty to not ghost a girl, and maybe this was the moment he would give her a little speech about how packed his superhero life was, and that he preferred not to keep her waiting and-

“Maybe we could get coffee sometime soon?” Chat blurted.

“Coffee?” She tilted her head, her smile tensing a little. What are you up to? The exit was right there!

“If you like coffee? Tea’s perfectly fine, too, or hot chocolate. Or a coke, or anything. My treat.” He patted her shoulder. Why do I sound so awkward? he cringed inside.

“I guess that would be nice.” Marinette blinked a couple of times. “Shall we set a date now, or…”

“Yes! A date! That’s it! The day after tomorrow? 5pm?” I need to calm down, Chat smiled tightly.

“That works for me.” Marinette eyed her partner cautiously. He seemed overly excited. Had there been something in the earth? Should she call some kind of medical service? “Did you have a place in mind?...”

Chat Noir paused. He didn’t go out enough to be able to recommend a café off the top of his head.

Marinette saw his hesitation, decided he was probably more flustered than poisoned, and decided she should probably help him out with his invitation. “I heard le café des chats was quite cute, it’s not too far away… If you’re not allergic to cats.” She added with a twinkle in her eye.

“That sounds purr-fect!” Chat grinned. “Right, so now that we’ve got that settled, I guess I should go.”

“I guess so.” Marinette smiled. “See you soon, then?”

“Yep, later, Princess! And sorry again about the Magnolia.”

She waved his concern away and then leaned on her balcony railing to watch him vault away. Her smile fell when he’d disappeared from her sight, and she realised what she’d just agreed to.

A real date. In a café. With Chat Noir.

This is going too far, she thought as she hid her face in her hands.

[elenamiria]

The Naboo Sun

Obi-Wan X Reader

Obi-Wan leaves with Master Qui-Gon Jinn to Naboo for their mission. When the mission goes wrong you’re there to help Obi-Wan pick up the pieces, in whatever way you can. 

Read Part 1 - Part 2 here (though not necessary)

Word Count: 7.89k (OOF, it was almost longer but I split it into two)

Warnings: Angst (i’m so sorry😭), Mentions of death, p in v sex, loss of virginity (though it is glossed over), unprotected sex (don't be silly wrap your willy in real life), fluffy ending

We have plot! It’s mainly relationship building as this is the first time we’ve really explored the reader character! I hope you all like it and don’t worry there’s still some good stuff in there  🥰

Also this is officially going to be a series, I already have the next part planned out and currently my plan is to do a few chapters per each important time period (If there are any specific clone wars episodes you want covered let me know)  Tags: @fishswimbetterunderwater @blxwjobsforclones​ @a-dorin​ @obitwo​ (if anyone would prefer not to be tagged just let me know :) )

Obi-Wan was unable to come see you after he had received his orders as he and Master Jinn set off without delay. You were left wondering how long they would be gone and to get the answers you sought you questioned your Master. He didn’t have much information, or he just wasn’t willing to share, only that they were sent to Naboo for negotiations with the Trade Federation and no - he didn’t know how long they would be gone.

You had been in the middle of training when Obi-Wan and Master Jinn had returned. Training was put on pause as your master, Mace Windu, was called to the council for their report. You tagged along hoping to get to see your fellow padawan for even just a few moments, though you were forced to wait outside the chambers; but it wasn’t as if you had anything better to do, Master Windu had made it clear that you would continue your training when he was finished. You aimlessly paced, pausing occasionally to take in the bustling city outside the window - being in the temple it was easy to forget that there was a whole world around you. Finally the chamber doors opened and you turned hopefully, a gleeful smile crossing your face when your eyes met the blue of Obi-Wan’s, who couldn’t help but shoot a grin back. He turned to his master and Qui-Gon gave a brief nod before continuing his path forward, “I’ll be waiting for Anakin to arrive at the front of the temple”.

Obi-Wan nodded and turned to you as you tilted your head, “Anakin? Have you made a new friend Kenobi?”

He offered a small smile and charming laugh before shaking his head, trying to figure out where to start. “Well, I suppose you could call him that. He’s a boy we found on Tatooine, he appears to be very strong with the force and Master Jinn believes he should be trained.”

The two sides of you had started walking down the long hallway outside of the council chambers, rather mindlessly, but at his statement you paused turning towards him confusedly. “Tatooine?? I thought your mission was to Naboo for negotiations?”

“Ah, yes. Well those were cut rather short as the Trade Federation tried to kill us and once we escaped we had to rescue the Queen. However the federation occupation prevented us from traveling directly to the palace so we had to travel through the planet core with help from the a rather unusual Gungan. Once we rescued the Queen we were attempting to come back to Coruscant but sustained damage forcing us to land on Tatooine, which is where Master Jinn met Anakin.”

You looked at him incredulously for a moment as he had said everything so matter of factly and the absurdity of how a simple mission had derailed caused you to burst out into laughter. Obi-Wan wasn’t sure what had caused your laughter and nervously tugged at his padawan braid, hoping you weren’t laughing at his semi-failure of the mission. It took a moment for you to stop and when you managed to look at him with a straight face you suddenly felt bad at his rosy cheeked shy expression. Your hand flew to his shoulder in a comforting gesture as you stuttered out, “Oh no, Obi-Wan! I wasn’t laughing at- I just...I don’t know you made it all sound so simple when in reality it sounds like complete chaos! You clearly did very well considering you were completely blindsided by the Trade Federation.”

At this Obi-Wan’s nervousness faded, he wasn’t sure why he thought you were mocking him in the first place (or why the thought of it bothered him so much as in the past he would have simply made fun of you back), and an easy grin fell into place drawling, “Darling you haven’t even heard the half of it! We’re fairly certain we encountered a Sith.”

Your jaw dropped shock once again covering your face, “I thought the Sith died out?”

He was about to answer before you continued abruptly, face softening and hand sliding down his arm to squeeze his hand, “Thank stars you made it back safely!!”

He smiled sweetly at your words and was about to reply before a loud voice called out to you. You turned to see the Council leaving the chamber, your master standing a little ways from the entrance waiting for you. Sighing you dropped his hand and turned back to Obi with a warm smile, “I better go. I don’t think I can weasel my way out of finishing my training with him.”

He laughed a little and nodded, “Go on, hopefully I’ll see you later. Though the council will be testing Anakin tonight though so it may not be until very late.”

As you were about to respond Mace called out to you again and you winced slightly before giving Obi-Wan a teasing wink as you turned to jog towards your master.

As you warmed back up with a few basic stretches you decided to question your master on what Obi-Wan had shared with you. Though you were most curious about the possible re-emergence of the Sith you also were curious on the councils thoughts on this boy from Tatooine. Casually breaching the topic you simply asked, "So this boy they found, do you really think he's as powerful with the force as Master Jinn says he is?"

Your master turned to you as he warmed up as well, "We have no reason to doubt him, we will be testing the boy tonight so We shall see then if he is as strong with the force as Master Qui-Gon believes."

Nodding, you crossed your arm over your body and gently pulled it with your other hand to stretch your shoulder before continuing, "Will he be trained if he is strong with the force?"

Mace sighed, “To be honest Qui-Gon is set on this boy being trained despite the fact that he is far too old to begin training, all we can do is meet the boy and see if he possesses the right disposition and abilities to be trained.”

You nodded thoughtfully as you ignited your saber and started practicing basic stances and swings, “And who would train this boy, surely if he is strong with the force he would require a great teacher to speed his learning?”

Mace shook his head, an amused smile at your probing falling onto his lips before indulging you with a reply, “Well, we have to see if the boy is fit for training first and we’ll go from there. Now, my padawan time to focus on our training.”

Despite his urging to focus the thoughts of a possible sith roaming around gathered in the forefront of your mind. So, as you both prepped to spar you let another question slide innocently out of your mouth, “Is it true the Sith are back?”

Your master gave you a disapproving look before beginning his attack without responding. You parried fairly easily but you knew your master was simply warming up. This only being confirmed as he finished his attack pattern and stating, ‘good, now faster’.

You continued for a few moments, blades moving in opposition and clashing lightly, until Mace pulled back after you locked blades for a few moments - though he could have easily used his superior strength to win the mock battle right there.

You backed off as well trying to anticipate his next move but were startled when he attacked again, this time putting much more of his strength behind his movements. You could sense he had shifted into his preferred style of Form VII in which he had declined to train you in, the moves coming at a rapid speed and much stronger than before. You fell into defending his attacks with tight movements but struggled to find an opening to attack him back. You were quickly being pushed back and after blocking a particularly brutal swing, which made your muscles strain with the power of preventing any impact, Mace swung around to attack your other side which you were just barely able to block. In doing so your footing faltered and seeing a weakness your master slammed into you with his shoulder sending you sprawling to the ground. His saber swung around in a twirl before the tip came to rest just above your throat and your breathing stuttered in shock, you had never been taken down so easily, and the heat of the blade scorched your face. Neither of you moved for a minute and the room was silent apart from the hum of his saber and your panting breath. Finally, Mace deactivated his saber looking like he had taken a light jog whereas you felt like you had gotten hit by a speeder. Groaning you took in how sore your body was, your hand rose to rub at your sternum where you took the hit, Mace had never pushed you that hard before and it was clear you hadn't been prepared. You left an annoyed huff leave your body, though it was only at yourself for letting your guard down as well as your lack of offense throughout the fight. Your Master bent down a bit and held his hand out which you gratefully took, though your shoulders twinged when he pulled you up. Wincing you stretched out your arms and Mace broke the slightly tense silence, “I’m sorry, I should have warned you first Padawan. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just-”

He trailed off with a sigh, looking away and you tilted your head curiously. When he didn’t seem to want to share any further you spoke. “It’s alright Master, while it’s clear my defense is...proficient it appears I need to work on my offensive abilities. Perhaps we could run through attack drills next?”

Mace offered you a smile before clasping your shoulder lightly, “I think we’ve done enough for today and the council will want to meet soon about the boy. Perhaps tomorrow.”

You snorted and gave your master an amused smile, “It’s not like you to turn down my request for more practice, but I’ll gladly take it Master.”

The two of you shared another smile and he started to walk to collect his robe before you called out again, “What were you going to say earlier?”

Mace turned towards you with a small groan, he wasn’t one for admitting his thoughts especially when they revealed soft feelings. He stayed silent for a moment, debating whether or not you would push the issue before remembering you always pushed issues (you were notoriously stubborn). You met his gaze with kind, perceptive eyes, which reminded him why he had taken you as a Padawan in the first place and he caved. Sighing deeply he looked down before admitting, “I was only pushing you that hard because if it’s true, if the Sith have returned, I want you to be able to handle yourself.”

A bright smile covered your face at his admission, you had a feeling it was something along those lines, “With a master like you the Sith wouldn’t stand a chance,” you teased. Though as Mace went to respond (probably to remind you that he had just handed your ass to you) you cut him off with, “Thank you, Master. Truly, for everything you’ve taught me”

Padding towards him you picked up your robe and you were shocked when he pulled you into a very brief hug, pulling away before you could even react his hands rested on your shoulder - an affectionate smile on his face. “Go on before I change my mind about training. And, try to stay out of trouble.”

You sat on your bed flipping through the holobook on Sith you had borrowed from the archives when a rapid knock startled you. Getting up to see who it was you quickly made your way to the door, opening it to reveal Obi-Wan who quickly pushed past you into the room. The door hadn’t even slid shut before he began talking, “The council is sending Qui-Gon and I back to Naboo with the Queen. We’re leaving now but I couldn’t leave without seeing you, there’s not much time, I told my master I had to grab something from my room.”

You laughed as you made your way to him and pulled him into a soft kiss but Obi grasped your hips pulling you as close as possible, deepening the kiss. His tongue swiped against your mouth and you opened to him with a moan. You allowed your lover to explore your mouth as he squeezed your hips harshly, low growl leaving his throat. After several long moments of making out you pulled apart, lips puffed from the force of your kiss and your breath came a bit faster. Swallowing breathlessly you looked up at Obi-Wan with sweet eyes, he smiled and pressed a kiss to your forehead whispering into your skin, “you look beautiful”

Laughing, as you were just dressed in your sleep clothes and hair mussed from your pillows, you affectionately cupped his cheek, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips you gave his braid a small tug as you whispered, “you better go before Master Jinn grows suspicious.”

Obi laughed at this as he pulled away, “If I’m being honest I don’t think he bought my excuse for a second.”

You linked hands as you walked a few steps to the door, tenderly kissing the back of his hand, you again stroked his face. Your brow furrowed as you grew serious, feeling uneasy as you uttered, “Obi, please be careful.”

He pressed another kiss to your forehead before humming an assurance and pulling away through the newly opened door. You watched his retreating form, smiling as he turned to wave at you; but as your door slid shut the smile fell from your face. A pit grew in your stomach as you could feel something on the edge of your perception. The force was swirling with a darkness you hadn't felt before and you couldn’t help but feel that something terrible was going to happen. As you turned into your room the uneasy feeling growing you finally identified why you were feeling so sick to your stomach, you were afraid.

Letting out a shaky breath you made your way back to your bed and sitting on it, making yourself comfortable. You closed your eyes and focused on breathing hoping to meditate on your feelings and come to peace. As you began your meditation you could only hope that your intuition was wrong, though you couldn’t shake the feeling that had settled over you.

At some point you had fallen into a restless sleep though you woke early. Unable to fall back into slumber you went through your morning routine and settled with a cup of tea to continue your study of the Sith. Several hours later a curt knock on your door roused you. You were already dressed in your typical attire of over sized loose white blouse and tan high waisted trousers, so you pulled your boots over the pant legs and attached your saber to your large brown belt as you answered the door, already knowing it was your master. As the door slid open you began to talk, having practiced what you wanted to say while you were reading, “I want you to teach me Vaapad, I know that’s what form you were using yesterday and I would like to learn more about it.”

You were met with Mace’s impassive face as he stared at you for a moment. Sighing he turned as you joined him to walk towards the training room. “No, you know it’s dangerous. Besides my Padawan, I do not believe you have the anger nor passion inside of you necessary to fuel the form.”

You didn’t take offense to his words, knowing the passion he talked about was a warped version, but continued your argument. “I may not have the anger inside me but if at some point I did fall into it I would like to know how to productively channel my emotions.”

Quirking a brow at you Master Windu countered, “Preparing to be angry at some point? Should I be concerned?”

You laughed slightly before growing serious, “Last night I felt something dark in the force, it was barely a whisper but I felt it. I couldn’t figure out what it meant and...that made me afraid. I meditated and that abated the feeling, however I want to be prepared in the case that it turns out to be something I can’t shake.”

You chose your words carefully not wanting to concern your master unnecessarily, “I also feel it would be beneficial as yesterday I could defend against the form but I couldn’t find a way to shift to attacking. I feel if I learn at least the basics I will have a better understanding how to effectively fight against it.”

Mace wanted to groan, you made sense and your preparation for his counter arguments left him with little room to disagree - apart from using the ‘no, because I said so’ argument. With a semi-annoyed look he grumbled out, “Remind me why I wanted another padawan.”

You laughed heartily at this knowing you had won the argument, “I believe you picked me because I was ‘a quick learner and I didn't seem like too much trouble’.”

You imitated his voice for the last part and as your master gave you the look while you gave him your best innocent face. You would have continued your teasing if not for reaching the training room. Mace gave you another half-hearted glare before conceding, “Fine, I'll teach you but only the basics. Then I would like for us to focus on Form V I feel it’s best suited for you.”

You trained for the rest of the morning, breaking for lunch and afterwards Master Windu was called for a council meeting. You had just finished washing up when you felt the darkness creeping around the edges of the force again. You were intent on trying to figure out what it was when you felt something else, a deep pain and anguish. Concerned your mind flew to your force bond with your master, worried something had happened but you didn’t sense any distress- he seemed fine. You frowned, confused at what else it could be, it was then that you felt something else - a strong hate. Exhaling shakily you tried to fight back the powerful feelings swirling in you, they were overriding all your senses, but they wouldn’t leave you didn’t even know how they got there in the first place. Desperate for clarity you sat where you stood to meditate, though you focused as best you could peace would not come. Hesitantly and desperate for answers you allowed yourself to embrace your feelings though when you did that it became clear these were not your emotions but from someone else. It was so close yet the answer remained fuzzy. Gasping your eyes flew open with a thought, could this have been Obi-Wan? You weren't aware of you two sharing a force bond though granted your force signatures always seemed to dance in tune with one another but that was to be expected when you were so close. Thinking for a minute you decided to tackle this situation like any other, by gathering as much information as possible to remain prepared. Gathering yourself you headed to the Jedi Library knowing you would be able to find what you needed.

It was there that Master Windu found you, reading intently, several hours later. A grim look on his face and the gentle hand on your shoulder told you all you needed to know, as you had read your suspicions had grown. Looking up at your master and shutting the book you asked, “It’s Master Jinn, isn’t it?”

For a brief moment Mace’s eyes widened and he looked as if he wanted to ask you how you knew but he plowed forward with why he was there - time being of the essence. “Yes, Master Jinn was killed by the Sith. However Kenobi fended off and killed the Sith. The council is going to Naboo and I’d like you to come with us. I believe Padawan Kenobi will need someone by his side to offer support and compassion, while he is very strong the dark side is always a concern, especially when such a devastating loss has occurred.”

You nodded and rose gathering your robe and the holobook. Mace informed you that they were leaving shortly and to meet him at the front of the temple as soon as you were ready and you would be meeting the Council as well as Senator Palpatine at the landing platform by the senate. You rushed through the process of gathering necessary travel essentials, making sure to bring the holobook about force bonds with you, and hurriedly made your way to the speeder Mace was waiting for you in. Once on everyone was on the ship and on the way to Naboo your master made his way to you, intent on questioning how you had known of Master Jinn’s death. Hesitating and weighing your options you concluded your best course of action would be to divulge what you believed to be going on and so you informed him of your probable force bond with Obi-Wan. Mace nodded, seemingly unsurprised, he commented on how the two of you had always been very close and that it was probably only a matter of time, though he made sure to caution you against forming too deep of an attachment. You swallowed deeply and nodded, muttering some reassuring words and hoping he didn’t sense that you were fairly certain both you and Obi-Wan were deeply attached to one another.

When Naboo was reached you let the council and Senator Palpatine exit the ship first, following behind them you waited as Palpatine spoke with Obi-Wan before conversing with the queen. Slowly the platform cleared as the Naboo government went to prepare for the celebrations and the council began speaking to Obi and the boy next to him, you hung back not wanting to eavesdrop after all it would be up to your dear friend to tell you what he felt comfortable sharing. Overall it didn’t take very long before the members of the Council had a clear picture of the events that transpired and they left to deliberate amongst themselves. Only when they departed did Obi-Wan see you standing there. His eyes widened and he took a deep shaky breath so loud you could hear it from several feet away, when you offered him a small sad smile he broke. Your name flew from his mouth, voice cracking, as he ran to you. Arms enveloping you so tightly you were almost knocked off your feet and you returned the embrace fiercely. You buried your face in his neck as one of his hands rose to grasp the back of your head tightly as if you might disappear if he let go. You heard him sniffle softly and you knew he was attempting to keep his emotions in check, pulling back to look at his face your hands rose to clasp his face - fingers delicately wiping stray tears. You searched his eyes to try to glimpse what he was feeling yet all you found was relief and longing pooling in his beautiful blue orbs. For a moment you got lost in their depths, drowning in the ocean of his affection for you. Unconsciously your head tilted, eyes flashing to his lips, and his eyes darting to yours both of you forgetting yourselves. Just as his head tilted opposite yours and you began to close the distance a small voice interrupted you and the veil that had cut you off from the rest of the world was pulled away. You pulled away quickly when you remembered where you were, though one of your hands slid down to rest on the small of Obi-Wan's back comfortingly. When you looked at Obi a scarlet blush covered his face as he looked down at the small boy in front of him. The boy looked between the two of you before repeating himself, “You’re a Jedi too?”

Clearing your throat to clear your own embarrassment, you nodded and squatted to be closer to his level. “Yes, I am a Jedi Padawan.”

You cut yourself off abruptly having almost said ‘just like Obi-Wan’ but remembering the whole reason you were here.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, I’m Anakin!”

He replied sticking his hand out with a smile. You gently shook it and gave a kind smile back.

“It’s good to meet you Anakin, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

You would have continued your conversation but you were interrupted by your master coming to fetch Obi-Wan to inform him of their decisions. Obi-Wan looked nervously down at Anakin and you were quick to reassure him that you would watch over the boy. Your hand came to rest on Anakin's shoulder as you stood up and as Obi walked away from you both you felt a small hand rest over yours. Looking down you saw his worried face and thought of the perfect distraction for the boy, “Anakin? Would you like to go on an adventure to find our rooms?”

You questioned and shot him a big smile, he looked up at you for a second before nodding and the two of you made your way towards the building you had been told your quarters would be in. As you walked you made small talk with the boy noting his excitement over flying as well as pod-racing, he also talked about building his own droid and you couldn’t help but let him excitedly jump from topic to topic. He only paused when you stopped to ask for directions and then continued excitedly talking though his words grew softer as he started talking about wanting to be a Jedi. Once he trailed off you spoke, “Are you not excited to learn the Jedi ways?”

“It’s not that, Master Qui-Gon said he would train me and now...” He trailed off and you felt your heart ache for him.

“Though I cannot tell what will happen Ani, I promise you we will take care of you. Besides you have me and Obi-Wan to look after you now, no matter what!”

You said reaching down to ruffle his hair with a bright grin, hoping to get a smile from him. You were rewarded with a small laugh and he ducked out of your reach before you could mess his hair any further. By this time you had reached the living quarters and you found them neatly labeled in Basic, stopping at Ani’s you took note that Obi-Wan’s room was directly across the hall from him, yours being next to your fellow Padawan. The two of you walked in and you were just about to excuse yourself when the child turned towards you with a hopeful face. “Maybe, you could stay and we could talk some more?”

You couldn’t possibly say no to the sweet boy and so you sat down on the couch provided in the spacious room and patted the seat next to you. You prompted him with a question about his home and he was off again, talking excitedly about all the little details of his home and telling you about his mother. The two of you became fast friends and you were startled by how much time had passed when someone fetched you for dinner.

Once dinner had been finished and the sun had gone down you knew what was coming. The hospitality at the hands of the Naboo was above expectation, they had arranged the funeral in respect to the Jedi ways, and the group of Jedi (as well as Naboo officials) made your way to the building where the funeral would be held. You had not yet gotten a chance to talk to Obi-Wan yet and you were longing to know what was going on as you stood behind Obi-Wan and next to Anakin. You could feel the grief in the air and you watched as Obi-Wan turned towards Anakin before the boy had even sought comfort. A bittersweet smile crossed your face as Obi-Wan told Anakin that he would be training the young boy, you knew Obi was more than capable of this task but you worried on how much had been thrust on him in such a short amount of time. You had not gotten a chance to talk to Obi and you were longing to know how he was doing with all of this. You hoped he would seek you out but for now you focused your attention back on the fire blazing in front of you, remembering the kind Master who laid before you.

Coming back from the funeral was mostly silent and Obi-Wan retreated to his room without a word. Making sure Ani was tucked in and that he knew if he needed anything he could come to you before retreating to the hallway. Once Anakin's door slid shut you turned, staring at the door labeled Obi-Wan Kenobi. You went to knock but hesitated, instead retreating to your room to prepare for bed not wanting to intrude on him. Once you had gone through your whole routine you paused, walking over to the wall that connected your room to Obi’s and pressed your hand to it sighing lightly. Pressing your forehead to it you exhaled deeply, wishing you could help him, you could feeling the sorrow through your bond and then you heard it. It was as if someone was whispering to you, you focused on the tiny voice and just barely made out what it was saying - ‘I need you, please...please be with me’.

You recognized the voice as Obi-Wan’s and you knew you couldn’t let him be alone. Quickly walking to his door you knocked softly calling out his name. There was no response and you took a moment to listen and again you heard the voice pleading repeating the same words over and over. Opening the door when you received no response and cautiously walking in you paused at the sight of Obi-Wan standing back to you rigid as a board.

You had expected to hear him speaking but when you entered the room it was silent. Though the voice still rang in your head and your eyes filled with tears when you realized you were hearing Obi-Wan’s thoughts.

You padded over to him wrapping your arms around his waist tightly, he startled but leaned back into you once he realized who you were. When you looked over his shoulder you saw he had one hand tightly wrapped around Qui-Gon’s lightsaber and the other was clutching his Padawan braid. You immediately knew what he was trying to do, it was traditional for Master to remove their Padawan’s braid when they were knighted, and suddenly his thoughts made sense as he desperately pleaded for his Master to be with him.

Slipping your arms out from his waist you moved to stand in front of him, hand gently closing over the one holding his braid. His eyes had been tightly scrunched closed but opened to look at you, at his devastated expression you felt hot tears trail down your cheeks. You had to deeply swallow and take a deep breath before you could speak to ask him, “Would you like me to help?”

At your gentle words Obi’s eyes shut again and he nodded quickly. Trying to force back your tears, though they still streamed steady tracks down your face, your other hand rose to wrap around his hand holding the lightsaber.

Obi-Wan activated his fallen Master’s saber, bathing the both of you in green light, and you gently guided the blade to the top of his Padawan braid behind his ear. Taking a deep breath you pulled his hand towards you just barely, a whisper of a movement, and just like that the braid was severed.

The room was still apart from the lightsaber deactivating and his braid fluttering down to drape over your hand. Then in a sudden flurry of movement the new Jedi Knight let go of both hands to wrap himself around you.

Quickly adjusting your grip you kept from dropping either item and crossed your arms around his neck. You felt his body shaking as sobs wracked his body, finally letting go of all the emotion he had been holding back all day. You stayed there, you weren’t sure how long, allowing him to express his deep sorrow and hurt until Obi pulled away from you.

His hands came to stroke gently at your face and then leaning to graze his lips against yours, he pulled the two items from your hand before walking to gently place them on a table - staring at them for a moment longer. He walked back over to you, eyes flickering to the bed briefly but long enough for you to understand what he was silently asking.

You let your hand entwine in his and you led him gently to the bed. With soft tugs and gentle pulls you helped him to shed his clothing until he was just in his underclothes, you were already wearing your nightgown and so you pulled the covers back and slipped into the bed and Obi slid in closely after. Under the sheets your legs entangled pressing closely together and he pulled you into his chest, your hand rising to rest on his collarbone - the other laying over his waist. You rhythmically stroked his sternum until you felt him slip into slumber and when you were sure he was asleep you allowed your eyes to shut as you used your bond to project peace, something you had read in your holobook, hoping to give him a good nights rest; and at some point, draped in his warmth, you yourself fell into sleep.

When you awoke you groggily realized at some point you had changed positions, you now lay on your side with Obi-Wan pressed firmly into your back and his arm around your waist. You groaned slightly and nuzzled down into the pillow not wanting to wake up, you heard an amused laugh and felt Obi-Wan’s thumb gently stroking your tummy. You lazily tilted your head up to try to look at him but Obi was one step ahead of you and had propped his upper body up enough so that he was able to capture your mouth is a sweet kiss. You moaned softly, still not entirely awake, and his hand trailed up the side of your body coming to grasp your chin lightly to hold you to him. As the kiss grew heated you flipped to face him, just barely breaking apart before connecting lips again, and Obi took this opportunity to fluidly slide onto his back pulling you to rest on top of him.

When you finally pulled apart your eyes slid back open, having remained sleepily shut through the readjustments, and you were met with the sunrise gleaming angelically over Obi-Wan’s face. You let out a pleased sigh when he pulled your body close to him and began to trail kisses down your throat, nipping slightly, as his hands held your waist. You needed more and so you gently grasped one of his hands to slip it under your nightgown, that was all the encouragement Obi-Wan needed and his other hand followed pushing your dress up in his path to reach your breasts. As he groped at your chest, teasingly pinching your nipples, his mouth moved down to your collarbone and finally trailing to nip at your hardened nipple through the light silk covering it.

You moaned, hips grinding against his growing erection, as he teased you with both his hands and mouth.

He repeated the gentle nips on the other breast until you jolted forward ripping the dress up over your body, desperate for his mouth on your bare skin. The attention on your chest had gotten you thoroughly soaked and you could feel his hard thick length pressing against you.

With a breathy moan you trailed your hand down to palm at him through his underwear, he let out a deep hoarse groan and quickly flipped the two of you over, tearing your underwear down with your approval and a quiet growl left his throat at how soaked your underwear were. He started pressing soft kisses down the length of your body until he reached your dripping cunt and shyly you tried to close your legs but he gently grasped your thighs whispering, “Let me take care of you darling, please”

His tone was so earnest, his eyes shining with pure adoration, and so you bit your lip as you nodded - allowing your knees to fall apart.

Obi-Wan let his fingers run up and down your slit softly, gathering your wetness before finding your clit and rubbing it like you had shown him before, giving you just the right amount of pressure. Sharp inhales filled the air as you felt yourself growing wetter and when Obi licked a tentative stripe up your pussy your hand flew to his head. He pulled away slightly, worried you didn't like it, until you desperately whimpered out a plea to keep going. Obi’s mouth returned to you experimentally licking and swirling his tongue around you, listening to every cry you gave him. Growing more confident he lapped at you with a bit more pressure, teasing at your hole. As your nails lightly scratched at his scalp in pleasure he removed his fingers from your clit and tentatively sucked it, you let out a loud cry as pleasure shot through you.

You could feel your orgasm building rapidly and you panted out encouragements as he continued his motions, though this time sinking a finger into you. Gently teasing he crooked his finger inside of you, hitting something that made your vision go blurry for a second, as you clenched around him he pulled out before sinking back in this time with two fingers. Pumping steadily he pulled his head back for just a moment to catch his breath and to take in your beautiful expression of bliss.

His tongue returned as he began to gently scissor his fingers stretching you until he added a third. It was when he started swirling his hot tongue around your clit that you clenched around him, cumming and biting your hand to keep from crying out too loudly. Again he sucked lightly on your clit elevating your orgasm and drawing it out for as long as possible.

You desperately tugged at Obi-Wan to pull him away from your drenched pussy and back up your body when you finally started to fade, though aftershocks were still shooting through your body. Eagerly kissing him you trailed one hand down his body to grasp at his cock and starting a steady rhythm of pumping him. At his small groans and moans you felt yourself heating up again and so you pulled his body down on top of yours, his weight resting on his forearms next to your head.

As you continued to stroke him you let your legs part in order to press his throbbing cock to your swollen lips. His hips stuttered, a beautiful guttural groan flying out of his mouth, and as he slid up against you your lips parted, juices covering him. You both moaned at the feeling of his velvet length stroking back and forth over your exposed slit and he continued to softly rock his hips as you continued to soak him, your own hips bucking anytime his hard cock caught on your clit. Your eyes had been closed but they slid open as you whimpered desperately craving more, wanting to give him everything and you knew he would do the same in return for you.

Your hand which had been holding him within your parted lips fell back to gently push his hips so you could line up his tip with your entrance. Obi-Wan’s eyes met yours and he whispered, “My darling are you sure?”

"Yes, please Obi-Wan, I'm craving you. Please let me have you, all of you" You letting your answer slip out of your mouth as you trailed your other hand down your body and used your thumb to rub your clit.

Obi-Wan nodded, you could feel slick leak out of you at the idea of finally coming together like this, leaning down to kiss you fiercely as he slid his head into you softly. Groaning at the intrusion he waited for a moment or two, his breath coming out in hard pants as your walls gripped onto him tightly.

He could tell you were softly tensing up and so he allowed his hands to roam your body teasing you gently. As he whispered that he was going to push further in, nodding you let out a small whimper as he sheathed himself most of the way in you.

You felt a small twinge but as his hand came to rub at your clit and his mouth moved to nip at your sensitive spots on your neck your attention was drawn from that. You took a second to adjust to his size, walls fluttering around him, his cock stretched you but not in the painful way you thought it would, rather you felt full to the brim.

After a couple moments you cautiously asked him to move and gently Obi-Wan pulled back slightly before pushing back in, movements slow and minimal at first as you both adjusted to the feeling.

When you had grew used to the foreign sensation and it started bringing you more pleasure than his fingers ever could have you buried your face in his neck with a soft cry of ‘more, please Obi-Wan’.

He was more than happy to oblige hips pulling back, his cock sliding in to the hilt now as his hands pulled your thighs gently further apart. Moans were flowing from your lips now as your own hand groped at your breast while the other slid to play with your clit as you lost yourself in the feeling of him surrounding you. As his pace sped up further your eyes shut desperately anticipating your orgasm, yours was rapidly approaching as he slid in and out of your sopping cunt.

Obi-Wan's own orgasm was approaching and his hands flew to your waist to pull you into him as he thrust, hips slapping against you as you both desperately chased your release. Your legs wrapped around his back and praise spilled from his mouth - “Oh, stars, you feel incredible my love. You’re taking me so well, gripping me so tight. Oh darling, I adore you I can’t wait to feel you cum”

One truly desperate cry of his name flowing from your lips had him throwing his head back face gasping in pleasure at your gorgeous voice and his expression pushed you over the edge, knowing you were the one bringing him this much pleasure.

Calling out his name your hands flew to his shoulders gripping tightly and Obi pulled his head up to take in your orgasm.

Seeing your face as you came just for him was his undoing and he desperately pulled out, hand pumping himself rapidly as his release spilled over your lips and thighs, his orgasm coming faster than anticipated. You continued to whimper and keen out as his release dripped over your pussy causing your walls to clench at the feeling and Obi-Wan sat there, soft moans leaving him as his head was thrown back in pure bliss.

Both of you panted as you came down from your high and Obi-Wan looked down at you his softening cock weakly twitching at the sight of his cum dripping off of you. With a groan he reluctantly got up and stumbled to wet a cloth to clean you up, wanting to get you cleaned up and back to cuddling in your warmth as soon as possible. When he returned you sat up slightly and gave him a sweet smile that took his breath away.

He had to remind himself what he was doing as he gave you a brilliant smile in return and then he gently pressed the cloth to your spent pussy, wiping his cum off with soft strokes and when he was satisfied you were cleaned up he tossed the cloth on the ground.

You gawked at him calling his name out indignantly as he just chuckled and crawled back up the bed to sit next to you an innocent, “Whaat??” leaving his mouth as he pulled the covers up over the two of you, pulling you into his side.

You rested your head on his shoulder as he gently trailed his fingers up and down your side. It was still early, sun still struggling to rise, and so you sat in comfortable silence for a while having no obligations for the time being and when you felt yourself drifting off you lifted your head to look at Obi-Wan who had furrowed his brow in deep thought.

Tilting your head in concern you made a small noise in the back of your throat to get his attention, his eyes met yours and something flickered over his face as he came to a decision. Shifting nervously his other hand came to delicately clasp your hands, you made another small confused noise before pressing “Obi-Wan what is it?”

He took a deep breath before leveling his gaze and you realized what he was about to say. Grasping his hands tightly you stared at him for a second before speaking, “Obi-Wan, you know if you say this we’re breaking the code outright and there's no coming back from this.”

Your concerned words only caused a soul warming grin to cover Obi-Wan’s face as you reaffirmed why and what he wanted to tell you. As he breathed out your name softly your face eased into an adoring expression and when he sweetly said, “I don’t care, I have to tell you. I love you, with everything I am.”

You felt your heart skip a beat as your eyes got misty and you stroked the back of his hand before a wide smile broke out on your face, “I love you too, Obi-Wan Kenobi. I love you with my whole soul and you're not alone - you'll never be alone, I'll always be with you.”

The two of you shared a loving kiss, sweet and warm, as you snuggled back into each other. You both slid down back under the covers and Obi-Wan wrapped strong arms around you.

At some point Obi-Wan knew you would have to get back to your responsibilities but for right now, in the glow of the rising Naboo sun, nothing mattered but the two of you.

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

A Great Treasure

(Jaskier just constantly getting kidnapped by dragons and dressed real pretty? Yeah. I’m into it.)

tw: gratuitous, almost My Immortal levels of outfit description because I am A Ho For The Look, dragons being horny, Geralt being soft as fuck but also kinda horny

---

The next dragon that took Jaskier wasn’t nearly as sneaky. Nor was it green. The great, sapphire-blue reptile swooped down above the road in broad daylight and plucked the surprised bard up with its great talons, disappearing over the tops of the trees before Geralt could so much as think to pull his sword. The Witcher heard Jaskier’s startled cry echo out over the forest and urged Roach into a canter. He departed from the beaten path and took off in the same general direction the creature had been headed. “It hasn’t even been three full fucking weeks yet. Fuck.”

Hello, Jaskier! I’m a friend of Etheid’s, the dragon introduced herself. The draconic method of telepathic communication still bothered the bard a little but the blue dragon’s voice seemed more sing-song than Etheid’s had been. Certainly more feminine. Call me Lythos, or Lyth for short. 

“Nice to meet you, Lythos,” Jaskier muttered, clenching his eyes shut tightly. “Let’s talk more when we’re on solid ground, yeah?”

Afraid of heights, bardling?

“Just a smidgen of a little bit.”

Worry not, we’re nearly to my tower.

“Another tower?”

Whatever happened to talking on solid ground?

“I’ve been kidnapped by two dragons in one month. I’m curious.”

I doubt this will be the last time you’re kidnapped by a dragon, either. Not until one of my brethren gives up during their turn or loses the bet.

“Their turn? What bet?! What are you talking about?”

I will explain the situation to you more fully when we land. There is much to be discussed. Many things to plan. Many rules to be determined and recorded for the others. 

Jaskier sighed, glad he’d left his lute tied to Roach’s saddlebags today, and let himself be carried off to yet another strange adventure. “So you guys are just going to keep swooping in and stealing me away like this because it’s fun?”

Yes. And because Borch said that you and Geralt are kind-hearted and friendly mortals. We dragons don’t meet many such humans in our travels; we’d like to reward you somehow.

“So you’re rewarding me by kidnapping me?”

That’s why we included the second part of the deal, with the elaborately designed outfits. It’s not just because we enjoy collecting treasures from all over the Continent and squirreling them away to play with later; it’s also our form of payment to you. If you’re dressed from head to toe in silk and gold when Geralt rescues you then there’s no time to stop and take those items off before you ‘escape’. You can keep them or sell them; anything you are given by one of us should be considered payment for services rendered.

“And the service that Geralt and I are providing is...entertainment?”

Correct. It would be unfair to use up so much of a Witcher’s time without paying him.

“You’d be surprised how many people do that, actually,” Jaskier griped. “Village after village, turning him away without payment just because he’s a mutant and a freak. It’s horrible!”

Now you understand why my kin are so desperate for something good in the world. The love between you and Geralt is pure and strong, that is the other reason we chose the two of you.

Jaskier blushed. “We’re just a couple of flimsy mortals that happened to bump into each other and get along. Most of the time. It’s a very human thing to do. There are other couples in need of some emotional urging, if you’re looking to orchestrate a romance.”

No, we wish only to further yours. Now, would you care to look through the clothes I’ve gathered? We have at least another day before your Witcher finds us. 

“Less than a day if he chooses not to pause for meditation, the fool.”

He will not risk losing you, Lythos sighed happily. I checked in on him earlier; he is meditating and gathering his strength. He has admitted his love for you now and is determined to prove himself. How dreamy.

“That is absolutely precious! Ugh, I love him so much.” 

Then let us make you lovely, so that when he arrives he is doubly excited to see you.

“I can’t argue with that logic. Not from such an ancient and wise creature.”

Flattery gets you everywhere, bard, Lythos teased. She huffed out a thin cloud of steam and Jaskier chuckled in return. 

“I know.”

---

“Are you kidding me?”

Absolutely not, the dragon shook its snout. Try them on. Unless you don’t like it, of course; I have other options, too.

“No, it’s all very lovely. It’s just...I get to keep them?”

Of course. I don’t want to make you change your clothes in the middle of Geralt’s daring rescue. That would totally ruin the romance!

“I suppose that would be rather odd. Even Geralt might catch on to something like that.” Jaskier held clothes the dragon had preferred in his hands, glancing once more at the suggested shirt. “What exactly is this supposed to be?”

It’s a tunic, of course. What else could it possibly be?

The bard gesticulated towards the dragon, holding the apparent tunic out for inspection as if he was shocked or surprised by Lyth’s choice. “It’s completely sheer!”

Yes, and it will make you look so very delicate, Lythos urged. Just try it on with the pants. Just once. You can change if you don’t like it, like I said. There’s a whole closet of costumery at your disposal, Jaskier.

The bard sighed and pulled the pants on first. They were made of a deep, peacock blue silk and hugged him in all the right places. He turned back and forth, observing their fit in the full-length mirror Lythos had provided. His legs were defined but the material wasn’t overly tight; it hadn’t bunched up near his thighs or ass like silk of this kind usually did. “Were these tailored to fit me?”

Yes, they were. 

“How? I’ve only been here for a few hours and you pulled these directly from the armoire!”

Etheid passed along your measurements to the rest of us so that we could better prepare.

“Right, of course. Dragons. Bets. All that fun stuff,” the bard sighed. He tugged the gossamer shirt down over his head and tucked it neatly into the waistband of his high-waisted trousers. Jaskier glanced towards the mirror again and discovered that he looked...he looked amazing. 

The shirt had been designed with a low, swooping neckline that revealed both his collarbones and a good portion of his chest. The thin, almost translucent white material left whatever the shirt did cover still almost entirely visible. When he blushed it could be rather obviously traced all the way down to his mid-chest. The giddy bard mussed his hair a little and did his best pouting ‘rescue me’ face; oh yes, that’s the way to do it. 

Jaskier looked downright sinful. 

“You are absolutely brilliant, Lythos! Geralt is going to lose his mind when he sees me in this ensemble.”

So you’ll wear it?

“This particular outfit is my new favorite. I’ll have to wait until the next dragon shows up before we can turn a profit from this whole bard-napping melodrama venture.”

There is always the jewelry. I can give you a few extra pieces to sell since you love the clothes so much; I have too much of the stuff sitting around and collecting dust anyway.

“Would you like it if I let you choose all my jewelry? I’m afraid I tend to go a bit overboard.”

Yes, yes! The dragon huffed happily, filling the space briefly with a cloud of steam. I have temporary earrings and bracelets and necklaces. I even have anklets if you so desire. 

“Goody!” the bard rejoiced. “I love anklets! I never have good enough reason to wear them, though. This will be lovely. Do you mind if I roll the pants up to my knees? Geralt does so love the sight of my bare skin. I think it would drive him absolutely mad if we showed a little ankle for the Witcher.”

Please do whatever you see fit, my friend, Lythos insisted. You must sparkle for your White Wolf. You must look the part of the treasure he seeks to find!

“Ah, so I’m a treasure this time instead of a damsel?”

Hmm, yes. I think that makes it more interesting. What kind of treasure would you like to be?

“Geralt’s,” the bard breathed dreamily. The large, winged reptile rolled her eyes and huffed again.

Duh, that’s the point. I meant like...pirate treasure? A king’s treasure? I’ve never done roleplay before. Mostly just burning down the houses of rude nobles and kidnapping some princesses upon request. I’m not incredibly familiar with human treasure.

“Oh! I could be your hoard!”

You’re brilliant! Of course! This will be so fun. What if you laid in my tail when Geralt arrived? Like I was guarding you?

“Well then how would he get me away without hurting you?”

I could make him give a speech? Woo you away from me with your words?

“Oh, that’s very clever. Very dramatic. I love it!”

We do make a good team, I think.

“Do you have any makeup? This look would be excellent with some eyeliner.”

You are definitely as entertaining and fun as Etheid promised. I’m sure that Aramaris will enjoy you just as much.

“Wait, who’s Aramaris?”

They chose the next lot after me. Then, after Aramaris has their turn, Vertos would like a chance to partake. 

“Hold on a minute. There’s a waiting list of dragons who want to kidnap me?”

And see Geralt come running to your aid, yes. It is rather sweet to watch and we are all very bored. We’re going to see who can make you the prettiest and get Geralt the most worked up. 

“So this is just a game to you?”

As I said before, it is both a game and a legitimate matchmaking endeavor. Additionally, we’re compensating you for your time and trouble.

“I suppose,” Jaskier agreed. “Plus this outfit is absolutely to die for.”

Yes, and now to the makeup!

---

Geralt was very confused and very tired. He had tracked the dragon through the woods to yet another ancient, dilapidated tower. Jaskier was hidden at the top, no doubt, probably terrified out of his mind. This was the second dragon to capture his idiot bard in a fucking month, though the first time had been extremely unorthodox. Just plain odd, really, considering Geralt’s previous experiences. 

Oh well, nothing he could do now except climb the tower and rescue Jaskier.

---

Jaskier was waiting for his Witcher to arrive while reclining within the coil of Lythos’s enormous blue tail His pants were only a half-shade brighter than her scales and the contrast was remarkably artistic (perhaps by design). The bard was barefoot and his pants were rolled up to just below the knee. Lyth had insisted on decking him out in lots of jewelry since Jaskier was to be her supposed hoard. It will be more realistic and believable if you’re dripping with silver and sapphires, bard. He found himself unable to argue with her logic once again.

Jaskier had a handful of thin silver bands around one ankle, a silver cuff around his left wrist, and another bejeweled cuff at the top of his left bicep, beneath the shirt. Lythos had added a thin silver chain around his neck, which fell to just above his chest hair and ended with a teardrop shaped sapphire pendant. Some kind of crushed gemstone powder had been dusted atop his collarbones and into his hair, making him seem to sparkle in the midday sun. He’d added a light, smudged layer of kohl around his eyes to widen and darken them like he had once at court. The dragon had also demanded that he slide several rings of various styles and sizes onto his long, tapered fingers. It will draw his attention to your hands, she explained. You will thank me tonight, I’m sure.

That suggestion had Jaskier blushing brightly and Lythos had nearly snorted fire from laughing so hard at the young man’s reaction. 

Here he comes! She announced, bringing Jaskier’s back to the present. His blue eyes fixated on the thick wooden door that led from the chamber where Lythos lay curled and ‘guarding’ him to the bedchamber where he’d stayed the last two nights. Very shortly after her announcement there was a determined grunt, a heavy thud, and the door crashed open to reveal Geralt. 

The Witcher was breathing heavily and his nostrils were flared but he wasn’t wearing his armor. He hadn’t been wearing it last time, either, and Jaskier wondered if he was already onto their little charade. “You know I won’t win if we battle,” Geralt admitted, staring across the room at the lounging dragon.

His eyes flickered to Jaskier for a moment, widened when they took in the bard’s appearance, and then returned to staring down the monster. 

I don’t intend to fight you, Witcher, Lythos said, projecting her bored words into both of their minds. Jaskier knew that she was faking the cold disinterest but his heart still picked up speed when one of her large claws hooked beneath his chin and raised him into a slightly taller sitting position. Though I suspect that you’ve come to take back my newest treasure and I am loathe to let it go so soon.

The Witcher nodded, unable to form words. He was nervous for the life of his bard but he was also slightly distracted by the way Jaskier was being forced to arch his neck and tilt his head that way. The bard looked so fucking breakable and soft, surrounded by scales and held partially aloft by such a strong and pointed appendage. His eyes were wide and completely focused on the Witcher, his own peril seemingly irrelevant even as he gasped against the scraping claw. Geralt shook his head to clear it and narrowed his eyes even more. “Don’t hurt him.”

It’s my treasure, Lythos hummed dismissively. I will do with the human lad as I please. Go away, Witcher, and leave us to play.

“He’s not a toy,” Geralt growled. He reached for his sword and cursed when his hand swiped through empty air. He knew bringing a weapon up so many flights of stairs was pointless but he still should have kept it on him for safety. Jaskier made a gentle, nervous noise and the Wicher flinched. “Please don’t hurt him!”

You would barter for the human? For his safe return?

“Take me instead,” Geralt offered. He held his hands up in surrender and took a slow step forward. Lythos lowered Jaskier back down to his lazily reclined position and raised her scaly brow. The bard was shocked; he hadn’t been expecting the Witcher to do something so drastic right away. He’d anticipated some kind of argument first.

You would sacrifice yourself for him? Trade yourself to me in order to save him?

“Of course,” the Witcher scoffed. Lythos could hear his slow heartbeat starting to accelerate. “I love him. I’d do anything for him.”

Hmm. Little treasure, what do you think?

“I can’t let him do that for me. He’s a Witcher, I am merely a traveling bard. The world has more need for him than it does for me.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt half-whimpered. A pleading tone bled into his words as he took another step forward, this time towards the bard, “You foolish man. I know you. You’d grow bored here. You’d grow antsy to travel. You’d try to escape and you’d get yourself hurt or killed or...”

I protect what is mine, the dragon interrupted. He will be safe here. I will keep him happy and entertained.

“Please,” the Witcher sighed. He dropped to his knees and bowed his head forward, white hair falling in a curtain around his ridiculously attractive face. “Jaskier was the first good thing Destiny ever did for me. I can’t lose him.”

I have seen into your heart and know these feelings to be true, Lythos intoned. She spoke as if she was making a very difficult decision and not sticking to a vague pre-determined script. You may take the bard and go, but you must hurry. I may change my mind.

Jaskier clambered out from between the coils of her massive tail and allowed Geralt to sweep him up into those strong, stable arms. He clung to the Witcher’s neck and buried his face to hide his smile. Lythos said her final goodbye to the bard alone; I hope my kin treat you fairly. If they do not, let me know, and I shall take care of it. Thank you for the lovely time.

“Thank YOU,” Jaskier mouthed. 

And then they began to descend the winding tower staircase.

---

“I hope I never see another dragon again in my life except for maybe Borch,” Geralt panted, urging Roach into a slightly faster canter.

“Yeah,” Jaskier said, smiling a little to himself. “Running into another dragon so soon after two nearly identical kidnappings would be very strange.”

[squishneedsahero]

Self Discovery

It’s Who I Am

Part 2

Description: How would The Falcon and The Winter Soldier have played out if you, the younger daughter of Howard Stark got involved? You had been kidnapped by HYDRA at a young age, your mind taken from you as they forced you to work towards creating new weapons for them and when HYDRA had fallen you had gotten free with your scattered memories for you to slowly piece together.

Word Count: 2715

It's a little over an hour later when the three of you reach the airport and board the military plane which had dropped Sam and Bucky at the warehouse. Joaquin is more than a little surprised that you of all people had just happened to be there and had joined their group. You take a seat and lean back with your eyes closed. At this point your cracked rib isn't hurting any more, which you should probably look into as theres a good chance you could also be enhanced thanks to your time with HYDRA, but theres also a good chance you have a really high pain tolerance thanks to HYDRA.

You take off your shirt, leaving you sitting in your leggings and sports bra as you decide to work on the technology in your shirt. You had used Tony's nano technology to create the shirt, and leggings, so they were smart and it was just a matter of programming them to do exactly what you wanted. Right now you wanted to make it so they would absorb most of the shock from any time you got hit, because dealing with super soldiers who you didn't want to kill was just a bit different from aliens you could use brute force on.

Sam and Bucky's talking pulls you out of your thoughts and you look up at them. They begin to argue about something so you go back to your thoughts, preferring those to the sound of their voices. You had found that you were quite good at getting lost in your thoughts, hiding from the world and it's problems in the relative safety of your own mind. You knew very well it was a trauma response, disassociating and blocking everything around you out. It might not be the healthiest thing but considering everything you had been through and the many ways you could respond to that trauma you'd take this response.

You had been working on all of this stuff with yourself since you had basically refused to see a therapist. You knew you should talk to someone but the settings you had seen that they offered therapy made you want to just shut down worse than you simply keeping to yourself with all of this. Before you know it you have already fixed the problems with your suit, gotten the nano bots set to better protect you in a fight.

Once the suit is finished you look up and come back to reality, and realize that the plane is landing. As you zone back in Sam notices and asks, "you good, y/n?"

You blink before focusing on him, "yeah, I'm good," its a lie but for some reason you don't want Sam to worry about you.

He laughs gently and shakes his head, "thats a lie, but we don't have to talk about it. It's not my business anyways, I was just checking."

This causes you to pause for a moment, normally people would continue pushing you for answers, "alright," it comes out almost as a question but the conversation ends there since the plane touches down at that moment.

Baltimore, you recognize the city as Baltimore. You follow Sam who is following Bucky, who is leading the way somewhere in the streets of Baltimore. Sam pauses for a moment to talk to some kid and you gently wave a hello before you all continue on your way. The three of you walk up to a house where Bucky knocks on the door and a kid answers only to say the person Bucky is looking for doesn't live there.

"Tell him the guy from the bar in Goyang is here." That gets the kid to listen and he closes the door as he goes to tell Isaiah who is wanting to see him. It's a moment later when the door opens again and the kid lets you all in.

You barely make it into the room, and see Isaiah when you begin feeling sick to your stomach. You know him. You had done something to him during your time with HYDRA and whatever that something was it was bad enough that the sight of the man in front of you made you feel sick. From the look on his face he recognizes you as well.

Isaiah gives you a sour look and you point towards the door, tears beginning to form in your eyes, "I'm- I'm gonna go," you look down and your hands are shaking. You look back and forth between Isaiah and the door a few times in the space of five seconds, "I'm sorry-" you say quickly to Isaiah before running out the door.

You make it to a tree in the yard where you catch yourself and take a pause to regain your bearings. You're about to hurl, but you're able to hold it back as you let yourself collapse to the ground, leaning against the tree as the tears flow down your cheeks. You grab your head and begin taking deep breaths. You didn't know what you had done to Isaiah but you knew you regretted all of it, that you had been forced to do it, just like every other horrible thing which you had done.

You get a hold of yourself after a few minutes and then sam and Bucky come rushing out the door, they walk past you Sam loudly asking why Bucky hadn't mentioned the fact that there has been a black super soldier for decades. You stand up and once again you're suddenly shaken back to reality as a police siren goes off nearby. It's as though the sound resets you, something that felt familiar as all of your physical reactions to seeing Isaiah disappeared. You stood up straight and made your way over to Sam and Bucky where a cop was asking if Sam was bothering Bucky.

"No. Do you know who this is?" Bucky asks sounding a bit angry with the cops for deciding to pull this shit. You can see the realization come to the cop's eyes as the other whispers in his ear, the regret and embarrassment clear on his face.

"Mr.Wilson, I'm sorry- I didn't recognize you without the goggles." With that he rushes back to the car where they end up finding out that Bucky has a warrant out for his arrest since he'd ditched a state mandated therapy session.

The police take Bucky away, leaving you and Sam in the street. It's once things calm down that Sam turns to you and asks once again, "are you alright? You ran out of there pretty fast."

You pause for a moment, looking at him before answering, "I'm... as alright as I can be." There is another pause as you try to shove back the vague memories that were now remerging due to the immediate threat of the cops is gone. You swallow deeply then shake your head a little before beginning to walk down the street, figuring you might as well get walking if he's going to bug you about this. "It's easier to not talk about it."

Sam is quiet for a bit, simply walking beside you for a while before saying, "look y/n, that might work for now but eventually it isn't going to work anymore. I know you don't know me and I don't know you but, I'm willing to help you. It's just a matter of if you want it, but for now let's just go get Bucky out of prison."

Something about that causes you to pause, and you look at him as the both of you walk. It's a few moments before you decide to speak, "thanks." You walk in silence from there, considering what he had said, of all the people offering to help he seemed the most genuine, your gut told you that you could trust the man next to you. Your thoughts on this topic cause you to frequently glance over at him even if you didn't notice this fact.

Sam on the other hand does notice your frequent looks, but decides to stay quiet, feeling he had already pushed you enough for the short time you'd known each other. Having a quiet moment though as the both of you make your way to the police station he does find himself stealing his own glances at you, not in a crude way. Sam had practically never been around you up to this point and he'd been distracted all day, this was the first quiet moment there had been between just the two of you all day. He had noticed that your eyes are the color they are, or the curve of your nose and how it complimented the rest of your face so well. It was a known stereotype that you were attractive, you were a Stark you had to be attractive, but Sam hadn't taken the time to actually notice this before this and now that he had noticed he wasn't sure if he could forget it.

The pair of you make it to the police station and take some seats it the lobby area, after talking with the officers at the front desk to ask about conditions for Bucky's release. They don't give either of you any answers, leaving you to wait instead. Eventually a woman walks in and up to the both of you, introducing herself as Bucky's therapist.

As she does this Bucky is walked out the double doors, "thanks for getting him out."

"It wasn't me," the woman responds as none other than John Walker comes in, flaunting himself as he does so.

You can't stop the groan of annoyance that leaves your body as you see him and the woman says she has worked with him before.

Once Bucky is out the therapist walks over to him, "condition of your release session now, you too Sam- y/n you're fine to wait."

This tells Sam that it isn't an option for him to say no so he follows, leaving you with John who had said he wants to talk with all of you as soon as they're done. You grab your phone, and walk out to wait in the parking lot for Sam and Bucky rather than having to stand by John and Lemar while you wait and just for good measure you decide to take a moment and call Pepper to give her an update on what it is you're doing.

"Hello, y/n," Pepper answers the phone, "you alright?"

"Hey Pepper, I'm good, thanks. I'm going to be gone for a while, not sure how long but I found something to do and it seems like it might help me find some sort of purpose. I just didn't want you to worry."

"Thanks for letting me know, and good luck y/n," Pepper responds. Pepper had been trying to help you since Tony had died, Morgan was the only real family you had left even if you didn't remember any of them anyways. But making sure you at least had a chance at a life you'd want was the least she could do for you since your brother had sacrificed himself to give everyone that chance.

You had officially been declared dead when you were only 13 years old, it was because of this that you hadn't been included in your father's will. Then with your sudden coming back with the blip and Tony's unexpected death you hadn't been included in his either. This left you with nothing to your name, and to be frank you were okay with that, you didn't see the need for material items. There were so many other things you needed to do with your life that worrying about an inheritance was no where on your list. It was all too important to you to not let anyone down, you needed to re-learn how to be yourself. Be who you had been before HYDRA and all of that had happened. Thats what everyone wanted from you they kept telling you stories about yourself and how you had been when you were younger, how you had dressed, walked talked and acted. You just couldn't bring yourself to want to let anyone down by not being that person any more.

This was why Pepper took care of you almost like another child, you had nothing to your name and no memories of your life before HYDRA. You were relying solely on other people's word that you were who they say you are.

"Thanks Pepper, I'll be home soon, bye."

"Goodbye y/n," then theres a click as Pepper hangs up.

When Pepper hangs up you don't remove the phone from your ear, instead turning to see if John and Lemar had followed you out of the police station. They hadn't so you put your phone in your pocket, and move to lean up against the building while continuing to wait for Sam and Bucky. It's as you take a deep breath to relax for a moment that the door opens and you hear a voice that is already annoyingly familiar, "hey, y/n," John greets you.

You bite off a sarcastic remark and decide to instead say, "hey Josh."

You can hear him struggle to not correct you and then say, "look, we got off on the wrong foot, let's start over, I'm John Walker, Captain America," and he holds his hand out to shake your hand.

You raise an eyebrow slightly as you look at his hand, "yeah," you pause for a moment, "it's not happening John. You introducing yourself isn't going to change my gut feeling about you and honestly I'm sorry because as far as I can tell you haven't given me a reason to not like you, I just don't and you're going to have to deal with that fact." Once again you were blunt with him, you really didn't see a reason to dislike the guy but you did and until he gave you a reason to like him you were going to stick with your gut to be safe.

Relief. That is what you feel only moments after you finish talking to John as you see Sam and Bucky exit the building. John notices too and decides to get their attention by setting off the siren of the cop car you were standing next too.

Once again the sound causes your mind to feel as though it has reset. A sudden calm sets over you, but it's not a peaceful calm, it's a terrifying calm. A calm before the storm though what the storm was you had not a clue.

By the time you come back, and zone back in to reality, Sam and Bucky are standing next to you and talking with John. John is trying to convince Sam and Bucky once again that all of you should work together. Bucky flat out rejects this. Sam on the other hand offers a reason as to why it is easier for you to not work together, and it is actually logical.

John on the other hand does not appreciate Sam's calm and logical reasoning. "Well, if you won't work with me then stay the hell out of my way."

You give him a double take, like are you serious John? Didn't he just say that he wanted to try and start over so that you liked him? Welp, now your gut feeling at least makes sense and you don't have to feel bad for disliking him for no reason.

You follow Sam and Bucky as they walk away, "we don't have any leads, so I say we bet on someone who has a better hand than we do."

There is a moment of silence before Sam says, "no, we aren't going to see Zemo."

Of course Bucky brings up good points and in the end convinces Sam that going to visit Zemo is a good idea. You of course only have a vague idea of who Zemo is and know he is nothing but trouble so you're just going to trust them on this, and your gut was telling you that you could trust them on this. You instinct hadn't lead you wrong yet so you were going to continue following it until it proved otherwise.

[kinetic-elaboration]

August 28: 3x05 Is There In Truth No Beauty?

Several days later, coming back to write up these Star Trek notes. I feel like I never got to talk this episode through properly, or even think through it properly by myself, because mom went right into watching AHS on Thursday, and I was too tired to even sort through my thoughts and when we talked yesterday, it was… entirely about other things.

So, here at least are my liveblog thoughts, and maybe I’ll remember some more as I write.

Right off the bat, this is such a cool concept: the friendly alien Ambassador who no one can look at because his form is not fit for human eyes.

Love Spock’s silly looking little visor. Not sure I get why he’s wearing it right now, when the Ambassador is in his box, but okay.

Dr. Jones is so beautiful. I love her dress.

I’m sure Spock is thinking “If only all Ambassadors could be put into little boxes like this.”

Okay, Ambassador’s coming! Everybody quarantine!

Right, I JUST remembered the significance of the dress.

Spock has experience with mind links with other creatures—a lot of experience that ho. Is he thinking about the pleasure of connecting to Kirk, that “dynamic individual”?

“My life is here.” With the Captain???

I feel like this episode is implying, all but stating outright, that Spock is very good at mindlinking. Like maybe even more so than the average Vulcan. Which makes sense because he does it so often. And yet he still messes up with AOS!Kirk.

I love the effects for the Ambassador. I’m not even being sarcastic; I think they get across the experience of looking at him quite effectively.

Hmmm, some non-touch telepathy. I know Spock has a little of that. I guess it’s mostly him reacting to Miranda, though.

Gotta get a dig in at Dr. McCoy before he leaves lol. Spock, so predictable.

Kirk’s flirting is off the charts today omg. Tone it down man.

SCOTTY IN A KILT aw yeah.

She learned from the Vulcans how not to read thoughts. Exactly!! Their telepathy is such an underrated part of the whole Vulcan thing, including why they remain ‘emotionless.’

She’s so jealous of Spock.

Honestly this whole scene… there’s a lot going on here! I’m trying to pay attention to the Vulcan telepath stuff but the men won’t stop flirting at 11. Especially McCoy, laying it on extra thick.

She does hold her own very well, though.

A preference for beauty—one of our last prejudices.

“Sleep well.” So cute. (I’ve already forgotten but I’m pretty sure this is Kirk.)

“We’re all vulnerable in one way or another.” KIRK SHUT UP I LOVE YOU.

Girls don’t like guys, girls like Medusan ambassadors.

This guy is so jealous. I barely know who he is lol; this comes out of nowhere.

Interesting angle on the hallway shot. I feel like there are a lot of those in this ep, like these weirdly long shots of the hallways… Maybe I’m just not used to seeing them with one or no people in them.

Kirk and the squad. Work work fashion baby.

“Larry? Marvick? Why?” Okay that is some real Shatnerian inflection there.

SCOTTY FIGHT SCENE.

*Ship veers obviously*

And look at this weird-ass view of the bridge. Like what the hell, where is the camera? On the lift? It’s so disorienting!

Spock needs to fix some stuff, calls for his protégé Chekov, of course.

And this funky music. So bizarre.

WE’LL BE SAFE AT THE BOUNADIRES OF THE UNIVERSE. Drama queen

This is a nutty view, this “unknown void.” Like one would think beyond space there’s… just more space, not a Windows 98 screensaver.

Space time continuum?? They didn’t time travel (again), did they?

“He just simply died.” How convenient.

“An entertaining suggestion, Mr. Chekov, but not very helpful.” Honestly, I do think he’s entertained. Spock has grown so much over the course of the show.. like I know there was controversy with his IC-ness this season but in this case, I really do think it is growth. Compare this to the Corbomite Maneuver, where he had a sense of humor but it was… a little mean, a little arch. There’s a certain warmth to him now.

Her mind must be so engaged that she doesn’t notice the plan for Spock to meld with the Ambassador = Kirk will seduce her. Lol. Of course. Everyone’s favorite honeypot.

He has absolutely NO shame.

The man sure does love his flowers, though.

She’s never been to Earth. So she’s a human born on a colony, I guess? That’s such a throwaway line, but so interesting. Could that be part of how she’s telepathic?

Oh no! A thorn!

“Violent emotion is a kind of insanity.” Can I steal this?

Too ugly to bear or too beautiful to bear?

Let me spell it out for you: this is romantic. (Again, I’ve forgotten what this refers to, but I’m going to assume it’s something Kirk said.)

Lol Bones just dropping truth bombs. How did he know she was blind? Did he recognize the dress or does he have access to her files as the ship’s doctor?

And Kirk accepts it immediately. “Of course! It’s the only reasonable explanation as to why you weren’t attracted to me.”

The Ambassador is brought to the bridge and placed behind a covid wall, I mean, protective barrier.

And now, we meet the Ambassador for real.

“THAT’s Spock!” Bones is so happy. He’s really not comfortable with Spock being all… smiley and flirty. Or rather, someone in Spock’s body, I should say.

Kollos is VERY flirty. And he and Miranda have chemistry for sure. It’s weird, because I don’t get any sense of that between her and Spock (rightly so) but Spock as the Ambassador and it comes right out.

I love the characterization of him. The idea that the Medusans’ thoughts are supposed to be particularly nice to engage with…. I really see how that would be. He’s so soothing.

Kollos is enjoying his time in a human body, I think. Mostly. Not all of it. (I got a little teary at the part about loneliness, ngl.)

Time to go back? So soon?

Noooo the shield! It’s like forgetting your mask when you enter a building.

[Spock wails]

Honestly, even seeing the steps to the upper level of the bridge is really weir. Like, I’ve always known there are steps there… but I’ve never thought about what they look like.

Kirk is so skeptical about all of this. Spock is in danger and his brain immediately goes to the pessimistic scenarios—very unlike him!

He’s freaking out nervous.

“Are we supposed to wake him with a kiss?” Idk, it’s worth a try. Why doesn’t Kirk give it a go?

Does Kirk have a game plan with Miranda here, or is he just honestly freaking out?

…The answer is honestly freaking out, which is rather a disappointment.

Trippy.

Spock has a necklace version of the IDIC symbol this time.

Everyone’s exchanging all these highly formulaic, formal goodbyes and Kirk’s like “Peace.” Wow, really trying hard with that one. Still rattled, I guess.

Also speaking of these formulaic exchanges—this fits very well with the HAICG-verse. Just saying.

This episode was really good! I loved Miranda, I am a huge fan of the underlying sci fi concept, and I though the Spock characterization and the hints of Vulcan culture were very interesting (and very in keeping with my own characterization and world building, imo).

The only thing I didn’t like was Kirk’s characterization. He felt like a stereotype, like who AOS thought TOS Kirk was, rather than himself—the over the top flirting, the dramatic rage, how he didn’t really seem in control of anything or on his game at all.

But, even though he’s my fave, the interesting Spock characterization made up for that, and I really appreciated these insights into him, interacting with someone who, while not Vulcan herself, had a Vulcan cultural background, someone he approached similarly to how he would one of his own people. It was very polite but with a lot of unsaid beneath the surface, which is how I imagine Vulcans are.

The introduction of IDIC truly was pretty random! I did like the idea of Spock trying to compliment her and not really landing it, because that’s just the awkward nerd sort of thing he would do. But it’s weird that the phrase has never been introduced before, and also that even within this episode, it’s only obliquely explained.

I’m not actually sure if I’ve seen the next ep or not. I don’t think so, but it’s possible I did and just don’t remember it very well…